Schools for the Future

You may, loyal reader, have noticed a slight falling-off of my posts here since February. This was because I had a job.

I was helping provide drawings for one of the last Schools for the Future to be built, for the same company I was at about seven years ago. It was great to be back at work, albeit on a temporary basis. I relished the tasks I was given, and made the most of the social opportunities working provides.

It was also a bit sad. The company was the one which took over the work of the old Kent County Council Architects' Department - of which I had been a member between 1997 and 2001. The work and the staff were transferred to the private company then, and ever since then staff had been leaving as the work dwindled. Kent County Council decided it would call on other architects to design work on their building programme. Ironically, perhaps, many staff found themselves working for these practices, on KCC projects.

Consequently, although I knew the building, and some of the people, it was a completely different place. The design office was literally three-quarters empty; all the computers, filing trays, and paraphernalia cleared from the ranks of empty desks.

Now the real cuts in public spending are being fed through the system, the company (whose main business is providing services to local authorities) has been in a state of seemingly permanent revolution since the summer. The latest restructure resulted in the reduction of the Architects office by another 50%. As a temp, of course I had to go.

On the wall of one of the office corridors is a pair of original drawings, produced by The County Architects in the 1880s for the building of the Union Street School, Maidstone. The School has gone now - it was probably demolished about twenty years ago. All that remains is the boundary wall, and two pairs of entrance gates. It was interesting to note how few drawings were required to instruct the contractor to build this (admittedly fairly simple) structure - today the drawing would be heavily laden with notes, dimensions, references, and the steps and plinths would be laboriously detailed out. However, comparing the drawing and the gateway as-built, it seems the builder took a few liberties. Perhaps nothing changes after all.