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It’s unfair to compare CLASP [1] buildings with centuries old stone buildings... The CLASP system was a stopgap measure for cost-effectively building schools fo

It’s unfair to compare CLASP [1] buildings with centuries old stone buildings... The CLASP system was a stopgap measure for cost-effectively building schools for the baby boomer generation given the economic constraints of post-WW2 Britain. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consortium_of_Local_Authorities_Special_Programme https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consortium_of_Local_Authorit...

KingMachiavelli 6y ago
And given the purpose of a school, building it cheaply is very utilitarian as it allows you to build schools faster. I would rather have the institution be more effective than more pleasing to look at.
AbrahamParangi 6y ago
It doesn't look bad because it's cheap, it looks bad because it's inhuman.
- baud147258 6y ago
  inhuman is a strong word just to talk about schools that were built on the cheap, especially schools that, at the time of constructions, were required because there wasn't enough schools building available.
- pmyteh 6y ago
  There's nothing inhuman about any of the three school pictures here. They're built to a human scale (not too tall, decent amounts of internal room), have generous numbers of windows, and are set in outdoor space with grass and trees. There are, on the other hand, lots of practical problems with this kind of building. The flat roofs have a tendency to leak, they're decades past their design life, thermal control is poor, they're riddled with asbestos, and a number of other issues. And lots of people think they're ugly. But this doesn't make them inhuman, just a flawed solution to a real-world problem. I think it's easy to forget just what difficulties the UK was in for building in the 1950s and 1960s. There was a spectacular shortage of housing (a baby boom and the effects of WW2 bombing didn't help) and a chronic shortage of both money and skilled labour for building. There is, bluntly, no way that enough traditional brick and stone buildings could have been put up for there to be enough schools. So you can certainly argue that better cheap and/or mass produced buildings should have been made, or that the aesthetics were bad, but writing off all the architecture without understanding its context is unhelpful. [Edit: in my view, the most inhuman feature of the images is the fencing, but that is almost certainly not original - security in schools was really stepped up from the 1990s onwards]

KingMachiavelli 6y ago

And given the purpose of a school, building it cheaply is very utilitarian as it allows you to build schools faster. I would rather have the institution be more effective than more pleasing to look at.

AbrahamParangi 6y ago

It doesn't look bad because it's cheap, it looks bad because it's inhuman.

baud147258 6y ago
inhuman is a strong word just to talk about schools that were built on the cheap, especially schools that, at the time of constructions, were required because there wasn't enough schools building available.
pmyteh 6y ago
There's nothing inhuman about any of the three school pictures here. They're built to a human scale (not too tall, decent amounts of internal room), have generous numbers of windows, and are set in outdoor space with grass and trees. There are, on the other hand, lots of practical problems with this kind of building. The flat roofs have a tendency to leak, they're decades past their design life, thermal control is poor, they're riddled with asbestos, and a number of other issues. And lots of people think they're ugly. But this doesn't make them inhuman, just a flawed solution to a real-world problem. I think it's easy to forget just what difficulties the UK was in for building in the 1950s and 1960s. There was a spectacular shortage of housing (a baby boom and the effects of WW2 bombing didn't help) and a chronic shortage of both money and skilled labour for building. There is, bluntly, no way that enough traditional brick and stone buildings could have been put up for there to be enough schools. So you can certainly argue that better cheap and/or mass produced buildings should have been made, or that the aesthetics were bad, but writing off all the architecture without understanding its context is unhelpful. [Edit: in my view, the most inhuman feature of the images is the fencing, but that is almost certainly not original - security in schools was really stepped up from the 1990s onwards]