This column is a continued conversation with the incoming Dean of Architecture and Urban Design, Prof. Marc Bonello. Part one discussed architecture as identity, part two looks at the faculty’s position on design integrity and teaching architecture that works for a warming planet. Commentary follows.

AD: Malta is neck-deep in a design illiteracy crisis. Architects today working on polite interiors, retrofits and small-scale development are design-led, which is nice but safe and benefitting the extreme few. There appears to be no such design sensitivity leading large-scale developments, where the damage is greater and far less reversible. Does this schizophrenia start at education level?

MB: No, I don’t believe so. Because in the same way that interior architects have the knowledge and expertise to develop their talents, the training we provide our students should give them tools good enough for them to face large-scale development.

The culprits, if you ask me, are threefold: the developer; the architect who is subservient; and certain misguided planning policies. I think it has to do with having good planning policies. And these should not filter down from the Planning Authority – there should be a wide national discussion that involves all stakeholders, including developers themselves, for us to understand that where we’re going is unsustainable. Today’s architecture is tomorrow’s failure. Unless we are going to correct this, we’re going to have a lot of buildings in the next 10 years that are going to be pulled down and rebuilt.

AD: As much as Malta believes it’s exempt from the climate crisis – it isn’t. Carbon is just one facet of building practice that needs moving towards humility, as opposed to the dominance of architecture as occupation, extraction, visual autocrat etc. There are shifts happening elsewhere in the world to this tune. How will architecture education in Malta take on this challenge?

MB: I think students need to, and are being trained to, understand what it means to have buildings where the dependence on energy is minimised.

AD: That’s around climate adaptation/resilience. What about climate consciousness?

MB: I think our students are well aware of the threats of climate change because they are mentioned so often during lectures, during design tutorials. And a lot of what we teach in this respect doesn’t come across in formal lectures, it comes across through design projects.

You’re not going to get a course on climate change, it makes no sense. First of all, because it cuts across so many different disciplines and aspects, such as built environment, agriculture, coastal development. So where do you stop? The way we approach this is we tend to focus on these very important thematics in design projects – because that’s where students can feel and understand.

Malta is neck-deep in a design illiteracy crisis

AD: Is the future of Malta’s built environment bright or bleak?

MB: I am an optimist. However bad the situation is, it is in my nature not to give up. The situation is not good. But not good doesn’t mean that the patient is terminally ill – it means something needs to be done and soon. Because if we lose our cultural heritage, well that’s what makes us a nation. It’s also a very important asset for our economy. I think the future can be bright but it’s not yet. We can only make it bright by putting our heads together and working hard.

The convolutions to Malta’s urban condition are compound. Mistaken policy has certainly been built into the fabric of our islands. Bonello’s triad of fault – the developer, deferential architect and bad planning policies – is, therefore, a fair appraisal of what has gone, and is still going, intolerably wrong.

But it’s not just that. It would be omissive to ignore the fact that, today, a distinct architectural point-of-view is missing in action. Perhaps it’s in the process of being made, in some secret gestation chamber hidden behind the glass-clad behemoths necklacing the islands. Failing that theory, then we must ask ourselves if the goal of design excellence and/or originality has been watered down, either by neglect or – far more sinister – by necessity.

The reality of the myriad of fault also does not preclude individual players taking responsibility of Malta’s shared urban problem and, more explicitly, making it an education objective to fix. Students arguably have the best ideas, crispest energy, most tireless agency. Either that is no longer the case or something is stopping them from manifesting that traditional zeal.

Shouldn’t design ingenuity (which is what students are trained to muster) be strong enough to outsmart malignant policy? Shouldn’t archi-acumen be geared towards the most urgent nationwide trouble-shooting exercise, that is, replacing bad building with good? If it’s not reaching this goal, then we need to question whether the bar we set for what makes good architects is set too low. And if it’s less about design rigour and more about sanctity of character, then let’s call it and teach that more resolutely.

I share Bonello’s predisposition for optimism and am heartened that his will be what steers the essential ship of architectural education through Malta’s urban storm. My hope, however, is for a faculty-wide mandate to reinstate the islands’ defected architectural nerve.

The technical side has been granted due focus. Now it should be a matter of dogma – an agreed creed for designers-in-training to become champions of what is architecturally good, right and, maybe, even inspiring.