CLASP is a knowledge-based organisation committed to improving the efficiency of the whole building process for the benefit of owners and users.
The name is an acronym for the Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme which is an unincorporated association of Public Sector Authorities.
History:
CLASP was founded in 1957 at the instigation of the then Ministry of Education for the purpose of improving the construction and delivery of schools. The Consortium addressed issues of skill and material shortage together with a high demand. It turned to a systematic form of construction. One which relied on a high proportion of prefabricated elements and had the ability to be built on sites with poor ground conditions including mining subsidence.
Collaboration has been the driving ethos of the Consortium. A collaboration between client organisations, designers and the supply chain. In the order of 3500 buildings have been erected in the UK using the CLASP system of construction technology. More buildings have been constructed around Europe, North Africa and South America.
The system has been designed for education projects, which included primary, secondary and Universities. Cambridge, York and Bath Universities all have significant CLASP buildings as part of their estate.
CLASP moved on to cover most building types found in the public sector. Hospitals, primary health care and buildings for all the emergency services have been constructed using the CLASP system.
The CLASP technology has also developed to meet the changing needs of its members. As standards of regulation have risen so the system has been developed to respond. Early CLASP buildings were flatroofed and often concrete clad. In 1984 CLASP moved to have its main expression as pitched roof and brick clad. In the 1990’s curved sheeted roofs were introduced together with composite wall claddings.
In 2004 CLASP reviewed its technology again with the objective of making sustainability its key driver. As a result the technology has moved on and changed so significantly that it was renamed Scape.
The CLASP frame, Toot Hill Comprehensive, Bingham, Notts.
The award winning Nottinghamshire CLASP infants school in Milan, 1960.
This prefabricated system (with or without the springs) was called CLASP, which not only denoted a type of structure, but also a way of co-operatively pooling resources among local authorities. In the 1960s the results were award wining and the design was repeated over many parts of the country, with some local authorities developing their own building systems from the CLASP template. In terms of fabric they were built with either concrete panels, red tiles, brick, timber or as a mixture. The choice of cladding was often related to the pre-existing local vernacular, such as the folk weaved tile hanging, which could ‘move like the scales of a fish when the building itself moved’ (Seaborne & Lowe The English School: Its Architecture and Organisation Vol II, 1977, p. 163). There are also five different types of CLASP builds, as the design developed between the 1950s and the late 1980s; from modernist to more traditional tastes. Today, CLASP is now going under the name of SCAPE and there appears to be a variety of different structures still using the steel frame system; curved roof, pitched, flat etc. They look like well thought out technological structures (certainly better than this) but so far I am struggling to find the aesthetic sensibilities that were present in the late 50s to the early 80s. Also, many new (and recently some of the old) schools are fenced off from local communities in fear of you know what. Have the links with Eames and the brave new world been sadly lost to the IKEA & Daily Mail generation? I hope I'm wrong, but I have a sneaky feeling that design based on a social ethos, no matter how humble, has been on the back foot for the past thirty years.
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