Counting the cost of bad design

Our campaign highlights the impact of bad design on people and the places where we live.

A new CABE campaign, The cost of bad design, is highlighting the impact of bad design on people and the places where we live. We believe that bad design is not just about aesthetics: it is about buildings and spaces that don't work, can't be maintained, and waste money because they need to be replaced sooner than they should.

With a vast amount of infrastructure - £47billion worth to date - being built using public private partnerships, we are urging the government to ensure that bad design is rooted out. Specifically:

• The Treasury should ensure that every procurement process links access to finance to satisfactory design proposals. If the design is not good enough, the project should be stopped until it is.
• Government needs to enforce the common minimum standards set down by the Office of Government Commerce for all public buildings. These demand that projects are supported on the basis of whole-life value for money, not just short term capital cost.
• We need to listen to patients and pupils to find out what works in their buildings and what doesn't. In our experience, public buildings are getting better. But we believe every school and healthcare building should be subject to mandatory post-occupancy analysis, to learn from the people actually using the facilities.

As part of the campaign, we are asking you to nominate the buildings, streets and spaces that get you down to illustrate the cost of bad design. We will be displaying them at the launch of The cost of bad design tonight (19 June), where Culture Minister David Lammy will give the keynote speech, and publishing them on this website.

The accompanying Cost of bad design publication contains three essays:

• Jake Desyllas of the consultancy Intelligent Space Partnership argues that the whole country is locked into a wrong-headed street design solution which deliberately segregates pedestrians from cars. This actively discourages walking, damages retail trade and fails to protect pedestrians. He argues designers should have the freedom to create streets as mixed spaces for everyone to use equally.
• Architect Robin Nicholson attributes bad design to focusing on lowest cost rather than best value; the difficulties inherent in measuring quality; the fickle nature of fashion and the rigidity of the planning system. He believes that too many projects sacrifice quality for short-term cost savings.
• CABE chief executive Richard Simmons argues that badly designed places impose social and economic costs on their occupiers, their neighbours and on society. This seriously diminishes people's quality of life. But these costs are rarely taken into account because they are not paid for by the people that make the decisions. This shows how important it is to predict and pre-empt the costs of bad design.

Richard Simmons, CABE chief executive, says:

'For years we have been sharing evidence about the benefits of good design, yet some decision-makers still fail to get the point. That's why we decided to look at the flip side - the cost of bad design. This is about what happens when we create places where you don't want to walk, where you can't find your way around, where you don't feel safe, and which limit your chances of engaging with other people.'