Fisk, T. ‘Student Power’, The New Universities issue of The Architectural Review VOL CXL VII Issue no. 878 April 1970 pp.292-294
Trevor Fisk was president of the NUS 1969
Sorbonne student riots 1968 – due to overcrowded classrooms and libraries and the separation of professors and students.
Although British students do not revolt as French students, university planners should not ignore common problems and attitudes that both French and British students have.
Previous architects could have taken certain views for granted- they were designing a community, with a sense of fellowship, separated from society to allow for concentration on academia and that students accept that the staff have privileges and better facilities.
When writing in 1970 it was noted that there had been a shift in the notion of community and common academic fellowship. This was still welcomed by some (‘campus intimates’) but others find too claustrophobic.
Staff privileges etc. are questioned.
Oct. 1969- Parliamentary Select Committee on Education and Science presented a report on student relations to the House of Commons. The report argued that there is such thing as a ‘student view point’ (despite individual student opinion differing greatly on many issues).
Students well aware of the expansion of university intake in the 1960s and unhappy about the way in which it was being brought about and critical of the following report:
The Robbins Committee report 1963- scheme for meeting the expansion
1) Upgrade Collages of Advanced Technology to new technological universities
2) Create some new universities
New universities underway before the report
The NUS put forward an entirely different scheme.
Apposed brand new universities created from scratch; for these would be, as Warwick is, in rural/ outer urban settings deliberately at variance with the prevailing pattern of Redbricks.
The separate administration, financing and design was rejected as was the LEA colleges.
NUS plan was similar to the Government’s in 1966 for comprehensive schools. The NUS’ slogan was ‘towards comprehensive universities’ whereby existing universities ought to be integrated with neighbouring LEA colleges. It was also recommended that building should be designed to be used by others when not occupied by students.
During the creation of the new universities there was no student population to be involved with the planning or design where as universities and their architects must include students in the planning and designing of universities and students must ask to be involved.
Politics of space- ‘us’ and ‘them’ and territorial tensions inside universities and between the university and the local community
Students want integration and equality, they are uneasy about an ‘educational community’ (which can be isolated and single minded) and the place of the teacher. There is some concern when designs reinforce the comparative status of teacher and student.
Undergraduate thoughts on university design only stretch to their residential and recreational areas. There are no specific thoughts on academic buildings. However when it comes to undergraduate thoughts on national planning for higher education are set out in a proposal (NUS).
Warwick designed its campus with student facilities on one side and teaching and administration on the other, ‘in between are several hundred yards of ‘no man’s land’’ which seems to suggest there could be tension between the ‘two sides’.
The article did note that Warwick had been ‘notably free of student unrest’ however there was some unrest in February 1970 (what was this?).
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‘The latest predictions point to some 750,000 students in higher education by 1980. If they enter colleges the design of which is totally inadequate to their needs and out of keeping with their aspirations, the blame will rest as much on today’s students for their silence, as on the college planners for interpreting that silence as consent’
CATH's notes on same article: taken for specific purposes of HES paper.
We can place the eachrly Warwick students' contestation of the spatial construction and organisation of their emerging university in the context of 1968 and the protests in Paris adn elsewhere. Trevor Fisk, NUS President in 1969 offers some possible reasons for student dissatisfaction: 'The democratic vacuum of Gaullism. The physical overcrowding of their classrooms and libraries had aroused them beyond endurance ... the students were alienated from their professors whom they rarly saw away from the academic lectern' (1970: 292). He contimues, 'Whatever the truth behind 'l'affarire de mai', there are perhaps two lessons for the university designer. At some level the physical environment was one stimuls to revolt. Some of the student's feelings were expressed as attitudes to the structure of their campus. The riot would have taken place, but it would not have arisen the same way in an other-wise designed environement ..The physical environement may not cause human actions, but it clearly shapes the form such actions take' (1970: 292).
Although there was no equivalent rioting in the streets of Coventry or Leamington Spa from Warwick's students, there was certainly evidence of the ways in which the physical environment and the kinds of relations and hierarchies it supported, were at the heart of students' expereince of university and their subsequent dissatisfaction. In particular, there was concern with the divisions between students and teachers which were central to the design and building of the campus. Fisk comments that the innate superiority of staff (and the manifestation of these in exclusive staff only common rooms and facitilies) was largely accepted by previous generation of student and teachers, by the 1960s and 70s new expectations of academic comminity and knowledge exchange were emerging and architectures which failed to acknowledge this were rejected. This was true in the case of Warwick, perhaps heightened by the fact that the design and construction was not pre-existing but going on all around the campus' 'inmates' (as Fisk calls them). It is hardly surprising that studnets wanted some say in the design and organnisation of the future university, but as the architect's biographers note, consultation with users was a long way from the top-down, autocratic mode of working at that time (ref YRM book).
Nationally, students' generally strong opinions about university development, was noted by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education and Science (in October 1969 - see Fisk, 1970:293). Although the lack of one unified 'student view' was noted, Fisk draws out what he suggests were 'general beliefs' and 'consistent attitudes towards the type of question which affects unviersity planning' (1970:293). These can be summarised as anxieties around the significant expansion of universities and student numbers following the Robbins report of 1963. Significantly for Warwick, there has been opposition from the NUS prior to Robbins to the creation of new univerisites from scratch. In aprt this was becasue these would 'be sited in rural, or outer-urban, settings, deliberately at variance with the city-centre university pattern which had prevailed for the past century with the Redbricks' (p 293). The NUS supported comprehensive universites via integration with LEA colleages rather than new independetn structures. This impulse needs of course to be seen in the context of the shift in the 1960s under Labour to comprehensive schooling. For universities such as Warwick, the NUS was concerned at the lack of a student population to contest and constribute to the design and construction of new-builds (as of course the students had not yet been recruited).
What emerges from all the evidence at this time on students' multifaceted concerns, two things stand out: 'Students are uneasy about the notion of educational community and about the place of the teacher. They are uncertain about the isolation and academic singlemindedness of their universities. They feel the siting and design of their campuses often aim at reinforcing this sense of separation and undivided purpose ...' p. 294
'In campus ... they feel anxiety when confronted by designes which reinforce the comparative status of teacher and taught. Integration and equality - although the meaning of these terms is as fiercely disputed amongst students as anywhere else - these are the principle goals' (p 294).
Interesting comments by Fisk that the specifi architectural requests from students tend to be about housing and recreation and the academic buildings and design tend to be discussed at the 'level of social theory' -(ie Cath at the level of 'ideals').
'One new university, Warwick, has been designed with all the students' facilities on one side of the campus, all the teaching and administrative areas on the other. In between there are several hundred yards of 'no man's land'. The whole arrangement seems to have been laid out to facilitate trench warfare between staf and students; the scheme nmight have been expected to re-inforce feelings of 'them' and 'us' and an alternative layout, with buildings dispersed randomly, should in theory promote a sense of community .. Expereince confounds the seeming idiocy of the design' (p 294). Fist here footnotes the later '1970 February unrest' - which we need to find out about from Warwick's archives and SU publications.
Overall, Fisk argues for importance of student participation in questions of design - cn we link here to the LG?
'Of the many stduents due to enter HE in years following 1969, 'If they enter colleges the design of which is totally inadequate to their needs and out of keeping with their aspirations, the blame will rest as much on today's stduents for their silence, as on the collehe planers for interpresting that silence as consent' (p 294).