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!?
