Tremendous thanks to Tim Garratt (Innes England), David Franklin (Franklin Ellis) and David Singleton (DSA Env + Design) for making Landmark Planning's latest pub seminar Monday nights event at the Parcel Yard, Leicester on “Does Good Design Pay” so illuminating and entertaining. I introduced the event with the Planning take on Good Design, stressing the importance of context and providing the latest on public policy at a national level. This then provided the framework for our guests to provide their views from a valuer and designers’ perspective.
We all got so wrapped in the debate forgot to take the guests' photo at the end! 100 professionals heard different sides of the debate in a modified pecha kucha style and then faced questions from an engaged audience. Many meanings to the question let alone the answer.
One of the big issues is creating and evaluating value over time, with examples of multi award winning schemes failing the test of value within a few years. Do you value internals or externals? How do you value public and private costs? Too many questions to achieve a common consensus, except perhaps that there is a real exercise to be had in educating us and society as a whole, so that the issue can be better appreciated. And then decision makers will put greater value on the design issue in its own right.
And as a total aside, for me, I was very interested that Tim Garratt, as a valuer, reckoned in building sustainability terms that EPC ratings did influence investors significantly more than BREEAM evaluation.
Any comments from attendees would be particularly welcome?
