A Warm West End

Well today brings warm sunshine to the West End and yet again my thoughts are drawn to back-courts and back lanes, forgotten green spaces and corners in which to dwell. This area of the city has more than its fair share of parks and private gardens but it still strikes me, when walking through the leafy back lanes, how much beautiful space is wasted and left to fester. Quiet lanes of rough and broken cobbles, full of bins and bulk uplift collections that could be so much more; quiet cycle and pedestrian thoroughfares, essentially linear parks. It really wouldn’t take much funding – just a bit of balls from the council and bit of co operation from the residents…neither currently forthcoming.

Perceptions of the profession

I was recently discussing a large public sector project with an acquaintance who works for the large public body that commissioned the project. I’ll not dwell on specifics of the scheme other than the composition of the professional team. An architect was not chosen for the lead role because the client body thought that they would be too inflexible regarding development of their designs and would become too wedded to producing something expensive and difficult to build so the architects have been essentially sidelined and reduced to contributors to be instructed. Upon further questioning, this notion of the difficult designer was not based on actual experience, just a generally held perception of Architects as difficult prima donnas who bring nothing but trouble. This would seem to be a pretty widely held view in major public and private sector bodies outside our nation’s capital and is a very serious problem for Architects. Looking at the project in question it is obvious that it would be greatly enhanced by a lead designer taking full ownership and control of all aspects of the process. Due to long experience I can see this fact and I can fully understand why my acquaintance cannot. We as a profession cannot expect either a) clients to be fully informed of the advantages of an architect in the entire process or b) architects to fully explain this in a PQQ, tender or verbal pitch. This seems to be a serious shortcoming of the RIBA in not pulling out all the stops to educate, lobby and even pressurise the government to promote the use of architects across all sectors and to also widely promote our profession across all possible accessible spheres of influence.
 

As a profession we have to endure a very strange disjoint of being strictly regulated by protection of title without any protection of function or even governmental promotion of the fact that we are in fact regulated by an act of parliament – something almost nobody who is not involved in our profession seems to realise.
 

Many of us who pay the annual ARB retention fee are rightly wondering what the point of this entire regulatory framework is if it is not joined to some statutory protection of or at least official promotion of function rather than just the current strict statutory protection of title. This appears to be the structural conflict between the RIBA and the ARB. The RIBA supposedly promotes Architects (while also offering regulation through chartership) while the ARB just seem to offer regulation and a seemingly convenient avenue for difficult but savvy clients who don’t like paying full fees to make your life even more difficult with spurious claims and other threats of ARB related mischief.

It is fairly obvious that most other professions, even the reviled bankers, can get their act together to aggressively lobby to promote their sectors and get laws put on statute to promote their interests.  Whereas the RIBA seem to be rather passive and merely contribute to reports by others, participate in general reviews and indulge in other associated wind-baggery. Unfortunately this approach seems to be leading to our entire professional platform being nibbled away week by week by week.

So I am now, after 10 years of refusing, finally joining the RIBA so I can complain loudly from the inside! I appreciate that the RIBA does indeed participate in plenty of worthwhile policy-influencing initiatives – however it does not appear out here at the coalface – to be yielding many results. It is unfortunately true that George Clarke and Kevin McCloud appear to have done far more to promote our profession than the august institution in Portland Place.

Perhaps the RIBA should consider a reality TV show – I’m An Architect, Get me A Strictly Not Dancing Commission or perhaps The Only Way Is Eames. Just something other than the painful to watch Stirling Prize...or any of the depictions of architects in popular culture; Tom Sellick in Three Men and a Baby!?