|
December 1, 2004
More than 500 students rallied at the Senate House in the center of Cambridge, England on November 29 to protest Cambridge University’s recommendation to close the school of Architecture – a widely acknowledged jewel in its crown - just a few years short of its hundredth anniversary. This controversial plan, which has shocked and angered the UK’s architectural profession, follows the school’s downgrading in a recent government Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) as a basis for decisions about funding.
 |
Surrounded by buildings symbolizing the university’s stature, eminent architects, local politicians, leading architectural teachers and students addressed the crowd. The mood was upbeat as each presented lucid arguments. Sunand Prasad, a leading architect and policy maker said: “You shouldn’t have to make cost arguments in relations to key tools of civilization.” The values of a Cambridge architecture education date back to the intellectual leadership of Leslie Martin and Colin St John Wilson, author of Architectural Reflections, a benchmark work of theory enjoyed by architects across the world, Rowan Moore, Director of the Architecture Foundation pointed out, and were based on architecture’s active role in making the urban realm more humane and receptive.
The RAE demoted Cambridge’s architecture school from a grade 5 to a 4, which has led to the vulnerability of the school but architectural teachers throughout the UK insist the measurements are flawed, with RAE and decision-makers at Cambridge overlooking the excellence of the research-based teaching of the school. Architecture is the most popular subject at the university, w ith candidates competing with eight others for each place. Meanwhile the university is undertaking cost cutting exercises across the board.
High-level lobbying has led to a petition with thousands of signatures including Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi as well as academics from all over the country. The story appeared on the front page of The Guardian newspaper on the day that it published a joint letter from UK architecture’s luminaries including Lords Foster and Rogers, Terry Farrell and Nicholas Grimshaw condemning as ‘an act of extraordinary folly’ the potential dismantling of an architecture school that ‘regularly wins top place among schools of architecture for its teaching’.
The school is presenting its case to the General Board of the University on December 8.A website established by graduates (www.scroope.co.uk) outlines the issues and provides the contact email address of Alison Richard, the University’s Vice-Chancellor, for those
wishing to write in protest against the plan.
Lucy Bullivant
|
Video
