Dive Summary:

• In a law passed last week, British Education Secretary Michael Gove banned schools from building glazed walls, curves, indents, dog legs, notches, translucent plastic roofs, roof terraces that can be used as play areas and other architectural features deemed to be extravagant.
• Gove aims to reduce school building costs by 30% and save £6 million compared to other plans by building smaller, exclusively practical schools.
• The plan meets the needs of 261 primary and secondary schools in the United Kingdom that have to be rebuilt.

From the article:

"... These strict guidelines are a reaction to what the administrators think has been extravagant spending in the U.K. on architecture in educational buildings, and in anticipation of the rehab of 261 run-down secondary and primary schools. Instead of anything with any aesthetic value, they are rolling out 'baseline designs': affordable, minimal, and purely functional edifices, that can be repeated building after building. By installing these restrictions to create low-cost, modular, and smaller schools—new designs also must be 15 percent smaller than current structures—Gove plans to cut school building costs by 30 percent and save up to £6 million per school in the future. ..."