British Standards versus international competition; influencing the government approach

Cabinet Office Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development (ACAR D) Facing international competition: the impact on product design of standards, regulations, certification and approvals H M SO, London, UK (1982) 108pp £5.50 (paperback)

The Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development was established bythe Cabinet Office in 1976 to advise Ministers and to publish reports on a number of issues, eg applied R & D in the United Kingdom and its deployment in the public and private sectors, the futu re development and application of technology. The Council's dozen members are made up of a mixture of academics and industrialists. The Council member most famil iar to readers of Design Studies is Sir Kenneth Corfield, author of the 1979 NEDO report on product design and President of the 1982 Design Policy Conference. However, the study on which this report is based was undertaken not by Council members themselves but halfa dozen senior industrialists and Geoffrey Constable, Head of the Industrial Division atthe Design Council.

It is an important little book; important enough for reference to be made to it several t imes in the British Government's White Paper, 'Standards, quality, and international competit ion' (Cmnd 8621 ), presented to Parliament bythe Secretary of State for Trade in July 1982. It examines howthe standards, quality and regulatory systems of Britain's competitors influence the international competit iveness of their manufacturing f irms and considers what changes are necessary in the UK to secure similar advantages for British manufacturers.

The report should be read by policy-makers in British product manufacturing f irms and by teachers of design in higher education. It reads well and is value for money. In effect, it is an acknowledgement that unlike its competitors, the United Kingdom has failed to develop an internationally acceptable system of

certification and approval for its manufactured products. This deficiency has adverse consequences for the export of British manufactured goods. Many overseas customers-- especially overseas governments- - now refuse to purchase products on the strength of voluntary codes of practice, the reputation of individual firms, or that nebulous designation, 'British Made'. Rather, they insist on certification of product worthiness by government agencies. Thus, the lingering attitu des of laissez-faire in B rita i n wil l have to be exorcised. The changed conditions of international competition demand that govern me nt m u st pa rtici pate d i rectly in design and manufacturing policy. Ironically, this chicken has come home to roost at a t ime when the administration in office came to powerchampioning less governmental participation in the manufacturing industry.

Those who believe in the infal l ibi l i ty of British Standards are due for some re-indoctrination. Those scriptures are about to be rewritten, largely on the strength of this report. Taste this for starters from

the White Paper:

The present corpus of British Standards is of variable quality. They are not always sufficiently clear and specific for regulatory use. The Government believes, therefore, that a change of approach by British industry to standards and their use is required. This may mean that a larger number of British Standards should be derived from foreign or international standards.

On your bikes! Rejigging the standards set-up in the U K wil l be a tricky task. For example, it is possible to invoke established British Standards in legislation so that goods must be designed to be safe when properly used and that unsafe goods must not be placed on the market. The advantage of recognizing standards in this way is that it gives those who comply with them greater credibility, particularly in legal proceedings. But compliance byother routes must be possible if the regulations are not to inhibit the UK propensity for technological innovation. Alas, life is not as simple as it used to be, especially for the British.

Stanley Moody

Alexander's architecture m view from a caf Christopher Alexander The Linz Caf~ Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. LScker Verlag, Vienna, Austria (1981) 94pp, $19.95, £13.50.

In 1980, Christopher Alexander was invited to design a building for the Forum Design Exposition in Linz, Austria. He was asked, apparently, simply 'to build something which thoroughly expressed his ideas and feeling s about arch itect u re'.

The result was something which might unkindly be called a shack from its exterior appearance, whilst from the interior photographs it seems to have an atmosphere somewhere between a chapel and a beer hall. In fact, it is a caf~.

It seems unpretentious enough from the photographs, a three-storey t imber building, and yet Alexander describes it as something

extraordinary:

the building was conceived from the outset as a place which was just rig ht for the feelings of the ordinary person-- you and me-- in which each room, each terrace, alcove, balcony, even each window and ornament, was chosen to be truly comfortable-- a place in which one could feel completely at home and at peace.

[This building is significant, he says, because] the Linz Caf~ is one of the first buildings in which I have succeeded in carrying out almost all the intentions expressed in the earlier volu rues of this series

Yes, this is the continuing saga of the pattern language, astold sofar in The timeless way of building, A pattern language, The Oregon experiment and The production of houses.

Without visit ing the building it is impossible, of course, to say whether, as Alexander intended

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in coming intothis building, one feels oneself solidified, made more whole, more at peace, more resolved in one's own inner life.., in essence calmed, and calm, and happy, with a simple happiness, comparable to that which we feel in a meadow.., or in the presence of a very old, and deceptively simple, religious object, like a Turkish prayer rug, or an early Christian bowl.

NOW these are honourable aims for any architect, but one might be forgiven for thinking that Alexander was perhaps over-reaching himself in setting such high ideals for a temporary caf(~ building at an exhibition. Cafes a re, of course, very welcome places at exhibitions, usually entered with a feeling of some relief and usually enjoyed for the opportunity they provide to rest one's feet and raise one's blood- sugar level. But does one need such a holy, such a reverential, such a sincere atmosph ere?

From the photographs in the book, the building reminds me most of all of the seaside cafd-shelters of the 1950s: simple, cheap, bare, a bit b leakwhen the sun is not shining. And in fact, many of the photographs in The timeless way of bui/ding and A pattern language also remind me of, and often do indeed show, Britain in the 1950s. Is that the age of innocence that Alexander is trying to recreate?

However, this is a review of the book, not the building. The first, very philistinistic thing one must say is that the book is ludicrously expensive. For £13.50 one receives little morethan a pamphlet: 16colour

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Christopher Alexander's first sketches for the Linz Cafd, from The LinzCaf6,p 17

photographs, 20 blackoand-white ones, and some 8000 words (in English, plus as many again in a parallel German text t r a n s l a t e d - ' from the American' apparent ly - - by Hermann Czech). The colour photographs presumably account for the expense and indicate the importance accorded to colour in the building by Alexander. He carefully mixed the paints, arriving at two shades of apple green and a peach yellow.

The second thing one must say is that the book contributes very little to developing one's understanding of the pattern language and its application. A list of the 53 patterns on which the design was apparently based is given, but wi thout any indication of how they were adapted and combined into this particular design. Instead, we get the kind of description of his design process that any architect might give: '1 began to

seea long and narrow bui ld ing. . . ' , and so on.

And finally, one must say that the photographs and the self- congratulatory prose do not give any reliable indication of how successful the design was. The colour photographs showthe building empty, the black-and-white ones show it occupied by animated visitors. I couldn't see anyone who looked as though they might be feeling more 'solidif ied' than when they first entered the bu i ld ing. . . unless one interprets the be-crumbed plates and empty glasses as such evidence.

Alexander gives his own evaluation of the building. He quite likes it. But the, he would, wouldn' t he? We don't know what the users thought of it, what the clients thought of it, what the builders thought of it, or what the workers behind the caf(~ counter thought of it.

It does look as though there are some nice bits to the building. For instance, the little 2-4 person alcoves with their narrow ent rances- - assuming, that is, that you aren't in a wheelchair, or very fat, or carrying big parcels. . , however, many of the simple wooden seats and stools don't look as though they achieve Alexander's intended 'simple comfort'. He worked out many of the seating details with full-size mock- ups in his office, using rough sheets of card and plywood and the available chairs and peop le - - a notoriously bad method of designing for the range of users to be accommodated [

Ifthe building is really as impor tan t - - and as successful - - as Alexander claims, then both it and the pattern language Have been ill- served by this sketchy publication.

Nigel Cross

Industrialized architecture assessed Barry Russel Building systems industrialization and architecture Job n Wiley, Chichester, UK (1981 ) £28.50

This is a very important book. To summarize its merits is not easy as it is over 750 pages long. This review can therefore only briefly say something about the contents of its dozen chapters.

vol 4 no 3 july 1983 197