Bartlett report sheds much-needed light on our profession’s wider failings

最近一份关于巴特利特建筑学院虐待历史的报告似乎不仅暴露了建筑学院的弱点，还暴露了困扰整个建筑行业的许多问题。

It is in the schools of architecture that we learn how to think and behave as professionals and, if the Bartlett is in any way typical, then it is no wonder that so many architects struggle with work-life balance and dysfunctional workplace cultures.

From unnecessarily long hours, to bullying, favouritism and harassment, the Bartlett comes across as a training ground for many of our most toxic behaviours as a profession.

The report brought back memories of my own time at the school. I did my RIBA Part 1 at the Bartlett between 1999 and 2002, and like many alumni, the place left its mark on me, for both good and ill.

>> Also read:Bartlett suspends staff as report uncovers “toxic” culture lasting decades

>> Also read:Bartlett director steps down following bombshell report

我在牛津大学学习现代史后来到了巴特利特学院。很难想象还有比这更不同的两种学术环境了。在沃德姆大学，我一直住在麦科马克·贾米森·普里查德(MacCormac Jamieson Prichard)设计的学生宿舍里，在莫德林学院(Magdalen College)鹿园的背景下参加一对一的辅导课程。

在巴特利特大学的第一年，我发现自己住在不太健康的伊弗埃文斯学院，离风景如画的卡姆登镇很远。Bartlett’s Wates House由一群以前的导师设计，是20世纪70年代现代主义最糟糕时期的幽闭纪念碑。

The teaching was even more of a shock. At the Bartlett I was suddenly thrown into what felt like a very large year group. There were 60 undergraduates in the first-year intake at that time, and this number grew to 120 by the time I left.

The school seemed to go out of its way to promote a culture of fear and near panic in its students

On our first day we were given stark warnings about how hard it was going to be to succeed as an architect. There was a boot camp vibe that I think is not uncommon to many schools of architecture. The next three years were to be an experience in the “break them down to build them back again” approach to education.

这所学校并没有试图向学生灌输一种合理安排时间、组织有序的文化，也没有在工作室之外营造一种充实而平衡的生活，相反，它似乎特意在学生中推广一种恐惧和近乎恐慌的文化。

Very early on we were told that extra-curricular activities were simply not on the cards for architecture students. The sport, acting and political interests that were very much seen as a key part of university life at Oxford were actively discouraged at the Bartlett.

在接下来的三年里，当我在巴特利特钢丝上穿行时，我经历了情绪的过山车。正如许多向调查提交证据的人所指出的那样，寻求并赢得导师的青睐是生存的关键。

I did, I think, succeed in just that during my first year. And, after a slow start, I found I was also enjoying myself. The assignments were often bizarre and very deliberately not about designing “buildings”.

A brief to design a “device for the human body” that would faciliate a deeper understanding of the town of Hastings was, I think, an attempt at getting us to think about and respond to context.

We were never directly told what to do, but somehow, most of us began challenging our assumptions and groping our way towards thinking afresh about what “architecture” was.

We were not there to be formed into little proto professionals, but rather to fulfil the more heroic role of the genius striving alone towards creative perfection

In a strange way I think it worked - at least in the sense that this was what the Bartlett intended. We were not there to be formed into little proto professionals, but rather to fulfil the more heroic role of the genius striving alone towards creative perfection. Group projects were striking by their absence.

I remember that, at the end of my first year, one particular student was invited by the course leader to help select which of the other students’ work should appear in the end of year show. Even at the time I remember that this seemed a cruelly divisive approach. Needless to say, it won the student in question few friends.

At the start of my second year I insisted, against the school’s wishes, that I wanted to spend time studying abroad on an exchange. In an indication of the elevated view that the school then had of its own status, I was told that there was nowhere else in the world good enough for Bartlett students to undertake an exchange with.

When I pushed further, I was told that, if I really insisted, then I would be allowed to spend one semester at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. No doubt SCI-Arc has its own problems, but during my time in LA I was struck by how relatively structured the school was. Much of the students’ time was blocked out and they attended taught classes that were aimed at gaining specific skills and knowledge.

Once back at the Bartlett I returned to a sink or swim culture. Due to a lack of studio space at the time, most students worked from home. There was a palpable sense of isolation and dislocation.

Lectures felt like a tick-box and bolt-on to meet RIBA criteria. Environmental lectures, which I had assumed would be central to my studies, were peripheral and there was never any follow-through in the design studio. Any real-world issues were treated as a tedious constraint on creativity and therefore to be ignored.

辅导课的主题通常是奇怪的不集中的，受制于导师的心血来躁和反复无常的情绪。除了一种隐约的前卫姿态的期望之外，很少有任何明确的目的来设计任务。

The whole system seemed to have been designed to remove any fixed criteria by which students could evaluate their own progress or attainment, other than through the approval of their tutors.

My second year was spent in a state of abject confusion. As usual the end of year project was almost entirely without a brief or any tangible parameters.

Maybe I wasn’t properly supported by my tutors, or possibly I wasn’t very good. Perhaps it didn’t really matter at the Bartlett, where the main criteria for success often seemed to be a form of manic fear-induced hyperactivity.

One of the lessons that the Bartlett sought to teach its students was to develop self-sufficiency and a faith in the strength of one’s own approach and convictions

I got a poor mark for my second year final design module and spent the summer working for a practice in Birmingham while re-doing my project from scratch. Essentially working on my own, with some very light touch but supportive input from Jonathan Hill, I rediscovered a confidence that I thought I had lost and ended up with a good studio design mark from the reassessment panel.

我相信，在所有的功能障碍背后，巴特利特学院试图教给学生的一课是培养自给自足的能力，以及对自己方法和信念的力量的信心。但奇怪的是，那里的路线是如此痛苦曲折。我不确定是否有必要这样做。附带损害往往是巨大的。

It is perhaps an irony that for me personally it was on joining Bob Sheil’s unit 6 studio at the start of my third year that I actually found some measure of stability and mental calm within the school.

His workshop-based “design by making” unit felt like it was made for me. Always happy constructing stuff, and expressing ideas in three dimensions, I was able to navigate my final year successfully, even enjoyably.

That said, my final term was spent, like most of my contemporaries, working through the night, striving towards what often felt like some unknowable goal.

我在盟军和莫里森学院度过的一年，完全没有受到巴特利特学院的监督，尽管那一年我给学校交了一大笔学费，但并没有取得多大的成功。事后看来，我对教育系统和我的工作经验感到精疲力竭，深感失望。

I did initially return to the Bartlett for my RIBA Part 2. But after six weeks a depressing sense of repetition descended. I realised that I had actually had enough and went to Bath instead.

I have reached out to contempories from that time to ask them what they remember. Stephen Molloy, founder of Fundamental, a Berlin-based design and retail collaborative, told me: “Personally speaking, a negative experience that stands out was being told to go back to Ireland and grow potatoes at a crit.”

但他承认，这种方法对一些学生有效:“环境艰苦、不舒服;我看到许多学生受苦。但我也看到许多人超越了他们之前设想的限制，很少有不经历一些困难就能成长的。”

Another contemporary, Giles Heather, director of Goldstein Heather Architects, is more damning in his criticism: “We were there to serve the tutors’ narcissism. If that chimed with their frequently narrow or obscure pseudo-intellectual hobby horses, all well and good; if not, then tough. As for pastoral care, the concept was held in contempt.”

回顾过去，很多消极的经历都被快乐的回忆和坚持到底的自豪感所覆盖。毕业有一种成就感，但其中一部分是幸存下来的欣慰。还有很多人辍学或被迫在最后几年重修。

Our schools and our ways of working need a radical overhaul, and we need a commitment to long-term and on-going reform

Of course the accusations of sexism, racism and bullying that appear in the Bartlett report go far beyond the petty favouritism and poor pastoral care that I may have encountered. But complacency has been the watchword of those leading our profession for too long.

Our schools and our ways of working need a radical overhaul, and we need a commitment to long-term and on-going reform.

A life in architecture does not need to be defined by staying in the studio or office so late that you can no longer think straight. It should not be an endurance test. And architects should not learn to tolerate abuse as part of the job.

Being an architect often does not involve much studio design time at all, and the skills required extend far beyond the ability to produce pyrotecnics on paper.

建筑培训需要包括明确商定的达标标准，其中包括建筑法规、管理和建筑艺术和科学的坚实基础。我们应该积极促进健康文化和良好的心理健康。

We often say that people are at the heart of what we do, but too rarely see this through in our actions and behaviours.

Rather than forcing every round student through the square hole of architecture school, we need a culture that is open and welcoming to diverse entry routes. That means encouraging apprenticeships, part-time study and US-style postgraduate conversion courses.

And an approach to education that recognises that, if we want to tap the vast wealth of talent that exists out there, then architectural training needs to be nimbler, more agile and a lot more understanding of students’ and employers’ needs.

The Bartlett may have taken things to the extreme but many of the problems that have been identified there are replicated in other schools and in many workplaces. Saying “that is how it has always been” and expecting the next generation to tolerate such abuse of power and waste of talent is no longer good enough.