Size isn't everything

I am naturally glad that former senior architect at the Department of Health Ceri Davies has seen my article (HD, May '98) on Phase 2 of the Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend (see letter above), and though saying it is worth taking issue with some of my views, he does not do so, nor does he challenge me on any facts.

Like many other DHSS architects involved in the Nucleus programme (eg Percy Ward, letter to Hospital Development Mar '89, p55; Ross McTaggart, "The Nucleus Age", Hospital Development supplement "50 Years of Health Building, Jun '98, ppl8-19), he is still very defensive of it and this is quite understandable.

However it seems a pity that a professor in an academic research unit at a school of architecture in a major university has to write what reads like yet another government handout, praising Nucleus after all these years, and patronising readers who "need to be aware of the overwhelming weight of benefits that the system offers".

He may be sure they will readily assess the academic weight of his assertions that "users are reasonably happy with the product" and that "patients, staff and visitors like it very much!". But "well over 200" Nucleus projects and "'a national capital investment of over 1.5bn" (sic) are meaningless figures. Size isn't everything and has nothing to do with environmental quality nor, vide Ceri Davies' last paragraph, does the amount of time spent on projects and their evaluation indicate worth.

Like every other British architect involved in health care building design in the seventies and eighties I received an intensive course in Nucleus; it was professionally unavoidable. My appraisals then and subsequently were based on extensive study of Nucleus documentation, discussions with DHSS and RHA architects and visits to many of the hospitals. Professor Davies is both wrong and offensive in ascribing my views to prejudice. He and others may not agree with my judgement but "prejudgement" it isn't.

In the interest of the balance that Ceri Davies is so anxious about, since he and the other DHSS architects involved are keen to take credit for the Nucleus project, they will doubtless be ready to accept some of the blame for the circumstances that forced them into it.

So let us remind them once again of the speech made by the Minister of State for Health, Dr David (now Lord Owen, on 6 December 1975: The plain fact was that the hospital building programme in 1972/73, like so much of public expenditure in this country at that time, was completely out of control. He went on to describe the emergence of Nucleus "...a standardised but flexible basic hospital for around 300 beds at a cost in May 1975 no higher than 6 million...that would...cut time and save money".

Having lost the control afforded by a decade of applied guidance, culminating in Capricode, the Department reestablished it with a vengeance using Nucleus to obtain what Ceri Davies proudly calls "a backbone of flexible building stock" for the NHS Estates Agents. A "weight of benefits" indeed, undeniably "overwhelming" the practice of hospital design.

Copyright Wilmington Publishing Ltd. Sep 1998
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