Every picture tells a story

Peter Stewart, director of the design review (1999 - 2005), discusses the relationship between words and pictures.

It is a commonplace that many architects identify with the image of the uomo or donna universale. They enjoy, on a good day at least, the variety of skills and knowledge required to do the job. So they are likely to regret an apparent paradox of architectural practice today: that, on large projects at least, there are more and more consultants and experts doing things that architects used to do, while at the same time architects find that they spend more and more of their time doing things other than the basics of designing and detailing buildings and making sure that the builder builds what is shown on the drawings It's not really a paradox, of course; the architect remains close to the centre of the complicated web of project communications, and even if they are not the planning supervisor, for example, they can be confident that the planning supervisor will keep them busy.

This 'consultant creep' (as an architect I know calls it) has reached areas of work once thought of as fundamental to architectural practice, such as illustrating projects. A case in point is the 'visual impact assessment' usually carried out on a large project to form part of an 'environmental statement', submitted in parallel with the planning application. Many architects bridle at these ghastly, bureaucratic-sounding phrases, and wonder why a decent set of drawings won't do the trick. I think they are right.

In my work at CABE, I have the opportunity to see and read a wide range of visual impact assessments, containing illustrations of projects together with written commentary, usually written by planning consultants rather than the project's designers.

The relationship between words and pictures in explaining projects is worth thinking about. Both are necessary. Both can evade or mislead as much as they explain. But to make a bad project appear good through the use of misleading visual images is a rare skill. Words, I suspect, are cheaper, even when written by planning consultants. And that is where the visual impact assessment comes in.

The text of the VIA will typically include a planning consultant's opinions of the 'visual impact' of the project when seen in selected views. The general drift of the text is often to persuade the reader that they will hardly notice the project. At their worst, these documents do everything they can to avoid owning up to what a scheme will actually look like. I read one which assessed the 'visual impact' of a huge power station on an exposed coastal site. The assessment included identifying points along the coastal path from which views of the buildings could be avoided by standing behind clumps of bushes.

More recently, I read a 'statement of justification' put forward in support of some modest structures which would appear within one of the more famous views in England. The not terribly aspirational title caused alarm bells to ring. There was one key question which anyone who knew the site would ask; what would the famous view look like if these structures were built? Of the dozen or so pictures in the document, none illustrated this. A photograph of the existing view was accompanied by a caption asserting that the view would not be affected by the proposals. Why not show us a picture so we can decide that for ourselves, I wondered? Such a picture did exist - and of course when I got hold of it, it became clear why it hadn't been put in the 'statement of justification'.

A frequent topic of the text of VIAs is the 'mitigation of visual impact'. For some reason I often think of Ely Cathedral when I read this phrase. Why did it have to be quite so big, especially in such a flat landscape? Perhaps because there was no one to advise on how to mitigate its visual impact. Most VIAs, as I have suggested, seem to take it as axiomatic that if something is to be built, the general aim should be to prevent it being seen - presumably because it might upset someone. Wouldn't a better aim be to design it well, and even to make it beautiful? Then we might enjoy looking at it.

Who reads visual impact assessments, I wonder? At their worst, much of the text is little better than drivel, cut and pasted from a previous project. I skim these documents, searching desperately for pictures, or text which says something illuminating. Members of the public don't read them. Local authority councillors don't, and I doubt whether many planning officers do. So what's the point? Give us - give the public - a good set of plans, sections, elevations and views which show the project honestly in its context, from the places from which most people will see it, and let us make our own minds up. If the words still have to be written, so be it. But when consultants are paid good money to write words which explain which why you're not going to be shown a proper set of pictures, then we are in the world of Alice in Wonderland.

As well as VIA's, I also see a large number of planning applications from across England. The variety in the standard of the illustrations which applicants put forward to explain projects is remarkable. Some applications, even for quite small projects, are exemplary. At the other end of the scale, some projects are so badly illustrated that it is a struggle for anyone used to looking at drawings to work out what is proposed; lay people, entitled to express a view through the planning consultation process, don't stand a chance. Unsurprisingly, there is a strong correlation between the standard of illustration and the standard of the design.

The biggest difference (other than the simple one between good and bad drawings) is the extent to which a project is illustrated in its context. A well-illustrated project will include, as well as basic plans, sections and elevations of proposed buildings:

• Plans at different scales which allow you to 'zoom in' from a plan of the town or borough to the immediate surroundings of the site and then to the site itself.
• Enough plans and elevations to show clearly, and compare, both what exists at present and what is proposed.
• Context elevations (before and after)
• Views from everyday viewpoints to illustrate before and after.

If you think this is basic stuff, then perhaps you're getting it right already; yet most planning applications don't provide this material. Apart from the question of skill, the standard of illustration is, I suggest, associated with pride and confidence in the quality of the proposal. Here is a simple and reliable test: if a planning application is accompanied by an A3 brochure explaining their project (and in my view this should be obligatory for schemes of any size), what is on the cover? If the applicants are proud if what they are proposing, there will be a picture of the project. If there isn't, they're probably ashamed of it.

To illustrate a project well - that is, so that people can understand what is proposed - ought to be a basic aim for any architect. It also sounds like the purpose of a 'visual impact assessment'. In other words, if the project is illustrated properly in the first place, doing the VIA shouldn't be much work - and it should be done by the architect, for an appropriate fee.

One example which came close to this was architects Snell Associates' planning application for a new football stadium at Fulham FC's ground Craven Cottage in West London. For this large, complicated and controversial project the architects produced a comprehensive set of documents which combined the design analysis, an explanation of the design's evolution, the planning application scheme design and the environmental assessment, including the visual impact assessment. The illustrations of the final proposals were presented convincingly as the conclusion of a process which had begun with a site and a brief. The documents, in other words, told a story, in words and in pictures.

Design and the 'visual impact' of design are understood by the mind informed by the eye. The impact and the understanding are not instantaneous; there is a danger of predicating the 'visual impact assessment' too closely on the idea of illustration as 'snapshot' (this issue was explored last year at the Heron Tower inquiry). Even in the visual sphere, the effects of parallax, of atmospheric perspective, of the facts that our eyes dart around constantly and that we use our feet, and so on, mean that the static images of visualisations are at best only a rough guide to 'visual impact'. Images should be presented as part of a story. I suggest that if VIA's are to explain a project in a worthwhile way which relates to the design of a project, then this story-telling should be done by the architect and not by planning consultants; and the story-telling would be more likely to be of the good kind (creating a world) and not the bad kind (fibbing).

I accept that bat surveys and the like are probably best left to specialists; but of all the components of an environmental assessment, the visual impact assessment is closest to the visual world of the architect. In an age when in some projects architects don't do much more than choose the cladding, this is a territory they could usefully reconquer.

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Peter Stewart is an architect and director of CABE's design review programme