Industry seeks museum without walls

Plans for a national museum of building have fallen down because the industry cannot afford to build one.

Instead, a 'building museum without walls' is now being promoted as part of a fresh bid to boost the industry's external image and forge greater internal unity.

The Building Museum Project is fronted by Bryan Montgomery, chairman of Interbuild Exhibitions, and Patrick Harrison, former chief executive of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who head a special limited company with charitable status. The original idea of the company was to create a fixed national museum illustrating the history of building, its technology, design, and participants. Despite some early interest from developers, however, the recession has ironically ruled out any immediate prospects of actually building a new museum.

But Harrison aims to keep the theme alive by setting up a series of inter-disciplinary one-day courses for degree students on the history of the industry and run at the Building Research Establishment. He has now written to the heads of all schools of building, surveying, engineering, and architecture, canvassing their support.

'Education and training of different disciplines is still largely carried out in separate compartments,' he says. 'Graduates emerge with tunnel vision thinking the other lot are idiots. Many of the adversarial relationships that bedevil British building are traceable to this.'