The Bartlett School of Architecture: A blueprint for conflict

The Bartlett School of Architecture has produced some of the world's most acclaimed design talent - yet it has recently slipped down the league table. Why? Lucy Hodges investigates

Tucked away in an unprepossessing building opposite Euston Station in London is the United Kingdom's premier university architecture department. In the past 12 years, the Bartlett School of Architecture has developed an international reputation to rival the great US and European schools.

Its students win the lion's share of prizes in the UK. Lord Foster and Richard Rogers knock on its doors for graduates. Its academics are at the forefront of their field internationally. This year, its great architectural guru, Professor Peter Cook, who founded the group Archigram in the Sixties, won the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal. Last week, he was decorated with the highest French award for culture.

Why, then, did the school drop down the league table in the latest research-assessment exercise? Its academics are perplexed. They are also extremely angry. Losing an excellent rating is a very serious business. It means the reputation of the Bartlett – part of University College London (UCL) – is no longer seen to be of the very highest, because it has fallen from a grade 5 to a grade 4. That could affect student recruitment; it could also affect its ability to attract research funding. And it will certainly mean that UCL will lose money from the Higher Education Funding Council. The estimated drop in income is £264,106 a year, a sum that the college can't afford to lose. "It has a real impact on the number of staff we can employ and the sort of resources we can get," says the dean, Professor Christine Hawley.

The story of the school's fall from grace illustrates some real problems with the research assessment exercise (rae), according to its critics: the secrecy surrounding the process, the fact that inter-disciplinary work appears to be penalised and that architectural research differs fundamentally from research in most other subjects. It is a typically British operation, they feel, in which the rules and processes are opaque. Other university departments are also up in arms, notably environmental science, which is threatening legal action against Hefce for below-average ratings.

At the heart of the Bartlett's complaint is the composition of the panel of academics sitting in judgement for the rae. The panel's chairman, Professor Peter Brandon, is a surveyor and the overwhelming majority of members are technical people, experts in building science or construction management. Only three of the 12 have any knowledge of design, and one of those is a landscape architect, say the critics. Another is an architect who has not practised for a while. In the school's view, that means the panel cannot assess a cutting-edge department, because they don't have the expertise. As a result they undervalued it.

"There's no one who is a practising designer," says Professor Philip Steadman. "There are people who have degrees in architecture and have worked in architecturally related areas of research, but there are no practising architects." Back in 1999, Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, UCL's provost, wrote to Hefce about what he regarded as the narrowness of the panel's expertise, but received no reply. Recently he has written to protest about the downgrading.

The results speak for themselves, the critics believe. Universities with a big emphasis on architecture received poorer ratings than those which were strong in construction management and surveying. If you study the table (see table, right), you will see that the chairman's department at the University of Salford received a tip-top 5* rating. Reading, Heriot-Watt and Ulster, which are also departments made up predominantly of construction, surveying and building, got 5s, too. The only departments specialising in architecture to receive 5s were Cardiff and Bath. Moreover, no university without a representative on the panel was rated higher than a 4, with the exception of Bath and Loughborough.

Departments such as the Bartlett and Cambridge, both of which got 5s in the last rae, are licking their wounds. The academics feel that they been unfairly penalised and that the construction lobby has a narrow definition of research, being interested in science and qualities that can be quantified, rather than in creative and artistic work. The problem with architecture is that, like art and design, research consists of buildings, or designs for buildings, rather than research papers.

Appreciating those buildings and designs calls for completely different skills from those needed in almost any other subject, particularly if, like the Bartlett, you are pushing out the frontiers of practice. The school does extensive work on gender and feminism. How many quantity surveyors are sympathetic to those subjects?

Moreover, the school is concerned that the panel didn't do their research. They suspect that they didn't look at much of the architecture and design, because it was only available at the institutions concerned, and there was little record of panel members asking for it. "It means that a school like ours, which is trying to combine excellence in creative design and in science, is penalised because on the design side we have not been peer-reviewed," says Professor Bill Hillier, the chairman of the Bartlett school of graduate studies.

"Architecture in England is a huge success story. Our top architects are the world's top architects and the Bartlett is the school supplying fresh blood, so this is extremely damaging to that success story."

The Bartlett has some strong support. According to Andy Bow, a director of Foster and Partners, its research is world class. "Students do the most innovative urban appraisals I have ever seen," he says. "The balance they achieve between the technical and the artistic is perfect." Paul Finch, the editorial director of the Architect's Journal and the deputy chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, says there is no evidence that the Bartlett's work has fallen off since the last rae, when it received a 5.

A number of architecture departments are supporting the school. Edinburgh University, which had been hoping to gain a 4 but in the event got a 3a, also feels that the panel barely looked at its work. "We were shocked by the result," says Professor Richard Coyne, the head of architecture. "It was almost as if they didn't look at our output. Our design work was compiled as portfolios, but none of it was called for."

Other departments are cautious. They believe the school played the rae game badly. If it had entered town and country planning under a different heading, it might have retained its 5. As it was, planning pulled the overall grade down.

This analysis seems to be borne out by Hefce's reply. The complaints are unjustified, it says. The school entered its academics under three headings. The biggest group was planning, which was rated 4. The next biggest, architectural design, was labelled of national and international importance, but much of the work was not supported by analytical or theoretical explanations. The smallest entry for the space group was rated 5*. "The quality of research in the submission as a whole could not be said to have sufficient work of an international standard to meet the criteria for awarding a 5."

Professor Peter Brandon, the panel chairman, rejected complaints of bias. Great care was taken to ensure that architecture was properly represented, he says. "The panel went to extraordinary pains to ensure that each submission received a fair hearing. A key feature was the reading of the outputs, which went far beyond what was required by the methodology. There are bound to be some disappointments, but I do believe the panel was rigorous in its judgment."

l.hodges@independent.co.uk