Architect Ric Blenkharn has high hopes for the Building Better, Building Beautiful report

The Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission has recently published its report “Living with Beauty, Promoting Health, Well Being and Sustainable Growth” and for all those involved in the planning, design and implementation of our built environment, it is a compelling and challenging read.The summary notes three key criteria - Ask for Beauty, Refuse Ugliness and Promote Stewardship. It also backs them up by adding “We do not see beauty as a cost, to be negotiated away once planning permission has been obtained. It is the benchmark that all new developments should meet. It includes everything that promotes a healthy and happy life, everything that makes a collection of buildings into a place, everything that turns anywhere into somewhere, and nowhere into home. So understood beauty should be an essential condition for the grant of planning permission.”With reference to refusing ugliness. it says “People do not only want beauty in their surroundings. They are repelled by ugliness, which is a social cost that everyone is forced to bear. Ugliness means buildings that are unadaptable, unhealthy and unsightly and which violate the context in which they are placed. Such buildings destroy the sense of place, undermine the spirit of community, and ensure that we are not at home in our world.”Promote Stewardship is explained thus “The built environment and our natural environment belong together. Both should be protected and enhanced for the long-term benefit of
the communities that depend on them. Settlements should be renewed, regenerated and cared for, and we should end the scandal of left-behind places, where derelict buildings and vandalised public spaces drive people away. New developments should be regenerative, enhancing their environment and adding to the health, sustainability and biodiversity of their context. For too long now we have been exploiting and spoiling our country. The time has come to enhance and care for it instead.”Clearly, beauty is open to interpretation but the report highlights a number of schemes across the country to illustrate the point and hopefully, the document will

have far-reaching consequences in the consideration of our built environment moving forwards.How this will be interpreted in policy is intriguing, since it will demand input from professionals adept at discerning what does and what does not constitute good and beautiful design. As I have mentioned previously, the role of discernment within many local planning authorities has been severely diminished by financial cuts and replaced in part by Design Review.With the impact of this report, the role of review and comprehension becomes vitally important. It is far more than a numerical, policy-based interpretation, rather an holistic understanding of a development and how it will impact onsociety for the future.I was reminded of how important this discernment when looking at a potential housing site on the edge of a pretty village. It was seen as inappropriate in the context of nearby listed buildings. What the assessment did not take account of was that a development of beauty could make a positive impact on the village and disguise a rather ugly late 20th century housing development.There is an opportunity for new development to heal rather than be a blot on the landscape.*Ric Blenkharn, Bramhall Blenkharn, Malton, www.brable.com