It’s the end of another academic year and I write this travelling back from two days as external examiner on the MA in urban design at Cardiff. Last week we had the first degree show of Atelier Lulu – a collaboration between my practice Urbed and Manchester School of Architecture. I’m always grateful for what I learn from students and this year one of my other students, Giles Nartey at the Bartlett, brought to my attention a quote from Bernard Tschumi that sums up one of the issues that you face teaching architects about urban design. Architecture, he wrote, “is not about the conditions of design, but about the design of conditions”.

One of the architectural notions that doesn’t transfer well to urban design is the idea of “programme”. It is fine when designing a building to ask “what is the programme for this space?” Buildings, after all, are designed to have a function and most of the spaces are intended for a particular activity. I might argue with the notion that it is the architect’s responsibility to programme the space – because it conjures up an image of a puppet master controlling the building’s occupants – but I’m prepared to let it pass.

By contrast the notion of programming public space is problematic.

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