This month’s issue of the AJ explores a sector in need of drastic, visionary and financial intervention: schools. As editor Emily Booth points out in her introduction, ‘while bold budgetary changes are made with the sweep of a pen at the macro level, each crumbling classroom is a local, micro tragedy’.
In News Anna Highfield delves deeper into this topic, asking whether the Tories’ new rescue package goes far enough to address deteriorating conditions in schools, and what measures a new government might take. Plus, we take a first look at Jamie Fobert’s newly revealed Maggie’s Centre plans.
Our building studies include Rivington Studio’s secondary school at Silvertown - an oasis amid the regeneration of east London’s docklands - and a supportive woodland learning environment by Loader Monteith and Studio SJM. Finally we take a look at Surman Weston’s first self-build project - a strikingly innovative and energy-efficient home that reinvents the terraced house.
Elsewhere the first piece in AJ’s new series, ‘Blueprints for Change’, presents Tom Holbrook’s bold proposition for The Arc – an 100-mile public landscape with water at its heart. The series will give voice to ways architects are challenging the most pressing social and environmental challenges.
In our Opinion pages Cristina Monteiro explains why we need to talk about social value in architecture, while Toko Andrews asks if specialisation is the way to succeed in the profession. And, in Culture, we explore two new exhibitions: SOAS University of London’s Building Africa and Abstractions: Studies of the National Theatre – photographs of Denys Lasdun’s South Bank masterpiece.
Finally, in Sketchbook we meet Fatima Mejbil of FAUM Architecture, and Hellman introduces us to RIBA presidential candidate Chris Williamson.
