An architect by any other name…
The protection of a name. ‘Architect’, the master builder. Accreditation, for many, is the bedrock of the architectural profession. In truth, this is an outdated and one-dimensional barrier to collaboration which cannot keep up with the changing ambitions and methods used in the architecture and built environment industry today.
Between 1992 and 1997. In 1992, the Architects Registration Council of the United Kingdom (ARCUK) requested that the government review the Architect’s Registration Acts. This request led to John Warne writing the Warne Report of 1993 which was published by the UK government and came to the conclusion that the architectural profession should be self-regulating, recommending the abolition of the title ‘architect’ and disbandment of ARCUK.
Eventually, as a result of this report, the Architect’s Registration Board (ARB) was founded, a simplified version of ARCUK. The ARB was established in 1997 as a body created purely to police the use of the name ‘architect’. Their role is to regulate the profession and has been criticised as being limited to “prosecuting sundry surveyors and plan-drawers for stupidly calling themselves ‘architect’”. Throughout the existence of the ARB, architects have called for its reform, these calls for changes all revolve around the protection of the name ‘architect’, the inability of the institution to react to market changes and the complication for consumers in having both the ARB and RIBA. This complication can even be seen geographically with RIBA and ARB being separate institutions with headquarters within the same block in central London. Perhaps if the ARB was not reformed but replaced, a more meaningful change could be enacted while satisfying the requests of the profession.
ACCREDITATION THROUGH EDUCATION
In April 2014, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) published a document titled ‘Architects Regulation and the Architects Registration Board Call for Evidence Context Document. This document reopened questions of architectural accreditation and regulation, giving arguments for and against regulation while posing potential solutions inspired by institutions from across Europe.
One of the reasons given in the 2014 document by the DCLG was that “architects are highly trained construction professionals with rigorous educational standards which should be recognised.” This rigorous education in the UK has stayed largely the same since 1958. Architecture schools have to find a way to make their courses relevant while still adhering to a pedagogical format laid out over sixty years ago. In 1988 Marvin J. Malecha said that architectural education “is often a result of past practices rather than anticipation of the future. Changing societal and professional situations render rigid plans invalid.” This warning has never been more relevant and architectural education needs to change if it is to keep up with ever-evolving modes of practice in other industries.
“Changing societal and professional situations render rigid plans invalid.”
Due to the academic setting of the RIBA three-part education system and the length of the courses available, most future architects must decide to enter the profession straight out of secondary education. Since the 1958 Oxford Conference when the three-part system was created, this route grew to become the most popular way to qualify as an architect. In 2015, 95% of all architecture graduates came through this route of full-time university education, accredited by RIBA, allowing them to gain professional status as architects by yet another institution, the ARB. The profession’s reliance on these institutional systems is creating an issue of access when aiming to give equal opportunities to people from different social, economic and ethnic backgrounds. Currently, men account for 73% of ARB registered architects, 89% of which are white. This means that 64% of all architects are white males, while only 43% of the UK’s working population are white males. These statistics are gradually improving as movements are made within all industries to close the gender pay gap and make professions more inclusive. However, more work can be done in the architecture profession and the greatest opportunities for change can come in the form of educational reforms.
One example of a new teaching format is the London School of Architecture (LSA), which was established in 2015 and became Englands first independent school of architecture since the Architectural Association opened its doors in 1847. The LSA was founded on the belief that the traditional route to a professional qualification in architecture accumulates too much debt for a professional with a starting salary of around £25,000. By offering a new programme which satisfies the requirements for RIBA Part 2 at masters level, the LSA aimed to widen the platform of access to the profession, while integrating teaching into a professional environment in contrast to 90% of Part 2 qualifications which are housed solely in a university.
Other alternative courses to have been set up to combat the status quo in architectural education include the MSci integrated masters course at the Bartlett as well as apprenticeship schemes, spearheaded by a ‘Trailblazer’ group of architecture practices. The former allows students to shave one year off from the traditional route, while the latter allows students to work while studying both RIBA Part 1 and 2, helping financially while gaining professional experience in the workplace. These courses go some way to disrupting the way that architects become qualified. However, they still require a commitment of between 6 and 8 years to complete and will therefore generally have to be the student’s first choice of education pathway or, in a similar vein to RIBA’s academic framework, they will have missed their chance.
The ability to gain professional accreditation in the industry without undertaking the three RIBA stages of education could allow the architectural profession to be more inclusive towards both moving trends and also towards a more diverse workforce. An equivalent to ‘teach first’ or a law conversion for those who have another qualification and work in the built environment or design industries is one possible solution to this issue. Neither RIBA or the ARB offer such a course as yet.
EXCLUSIVITY THROUGH ACCREDITATION
In his 1993 report, referenced earlier in this essay, Warne wrote; “I suggest that time will show that the protection of title has been largely irrelevant to the standing of the architectural profession or to the public interest”. This prediction is still relevant today, with the ARB supposedly working in the public’s interest by regulating the profession, while accreditation in itself is holding back the profession by being too rigid and institutionalised to adapt to new forms of radical practice.
Undergraduate architecture courses foster and develop a wide range of design skills by striving to solve problems spatially. However, as the mode of education becomes more specifically focussed on training the practising ‘office architect’, students begin to peel off into other emerging industries where their specific interests and personal mode of practice become more relevant. When RIBA released their education statistics in 2017 for the 2015/16 academic year, they showed that on average between 2010/11 and 2014/15, 2,950 students passed Part 1, 1,717 passed Part 2 and 1,060 passed Part 3 each year. These statistics illustrate that two-thirds of students who pass the undergraduate portion of the qualification divert from the RIBA pathway; either by changing careers, moving into other aspects of design practice or undertaking alternative streams of further education. There is no accreditation system for these students who have the grounding of an architectural accreditation but move off into other industries even if their practice has more relevance to pushing the profession forward than that of a typical ‘office architect’.
Work carried out at architectural software development labs, socially and economically aware think tanks and sustainably focussed ‘engineering’ practices, such as Bryden Wood, Open Systems Labs and Webb Yates is carried out by individuals who have architectural backgrounds alongside other professionals to get the industry of the built environment working harder and smarter towards a more sustainable and efficient future. In Marti Kalliala and Hans Park’s diagram, “The Architect’s New Atlas”, they illustrate the metaphor of the ‘landscape’ of architectural practise today through showing the ’architectural office’ as the melting ice cap at the centre of the world. As today’s traditional role of the architect loses more and more responsibility through new forms of alternative architectural practice, loss of autonomy through design and build contracts and the rising importance of consultants’ roles on built projects, perhaps the role of professional accreditation within the architectural profession must change. Perhaps the word ‘architect’ with its greek etymology of ‘master builder’ is no longer relevant and a new professional landscape must be formed to include traditionally educated architects of all levels alongside their counterparts in the construction and built environment industry.
IRRELEVANCE THROUGH EXCLUSIVITY
So even though the name ‘architect’ is being regulated by ARB to give clarity to the consumer, currently most ‘architecture’ is being delivered by non-architects. Only 6% of new houses built in the UK are designed by architects. Largely due to procurement blindsiding architects through the transference from traditional routes to design and build, handing more responsibility to the contractor, leaving the architect with the job of completing drawings on behalf of the contractor. Finn Williams writes that ”even where architects are involved, their role is increasingly subservient to other consultants, project managers, planning consultants, quantity surveyors and marketing advisors.” This is a very different landscape to that of the early 20th century when ARCUK was founded and regulation of the architect’s title began. “Clients were usually wealthy individuals, construction was done by small building firms and there were a handful of specialist subcontractors at most.” When this was the case, the architect lived up to the etymological root of their title, ‘master builder’. Due to the responsibilities and risks taken on throughout a project by an architect, the regulation of the title ‘architect’ was required to protect the client from under-qualified individuals wrongfully taking up the title. In modern practice, the architect is no longer solely in charge, if they are in charge at all. This should be acknowledged in education rather ignored and seen as a frustrating barrier to creativity.
When writing the Warne Report on the subject of abolishing the title ‘architect’, Warne wrote; “I believe that this will help modify some of the outmoded distinctions and attitudes which inhibit change within the construction industry.” If architects, or individuals with architectural education, are to become integral to the built environment industry again, they must do just that. Integrate. This may require going back to Warne’s original suggestions and give up the title if architects are to become part of a wider team. Engineers and surveyors currently provide their services without being regulated, yet architects do, even with their new, diminished role in the team. Perhaps instead of the architect seeing themselves as the master builder, the collective of consultants on a team should be recognised as the new ‘collective master builder’ and have an institutional accreditation to confirm and regulate this team-based service.
COLLECTIVE THROUGH ACCREDITATION
What would happen if a document as significant as the Warne Report was published today and was acted on? Could the ARB be disbanded and the title ‘architect’ be abolished? If architectural students were still to follow the RIBA education pathway to train as an architect, but become accredited by a new institution alongside other professions, what would this institution look like?
We have an idea.
The Radical Institute of the Built Environment (tr.IBE) is a proposal for a new, alternative institution in order to give a form of accreditation to professionals across the built environment and construction industry. It would aim to encourage collaboration, radicalisation, and cross-industry education and would provide an inclusive, constantly evolving and subscription-based form of accreditation.
The requirement to join would be to take part in both research-based and real-world projects as cross-industry teams; which together would be gathered into an open-source, online knowledge platform to be shared by all other practices and companies. A platform such as this would embody some of the original aims of the RIBA Library, by containing historic as well as live information on building projects for other professionals and students to learn from.
To instil the tr.IBE methodology in professionals, it will need to be included in an educational setting. With many architecture schools focussing on beautifully illustrated dystopian futures with little to do with the current landscape of architecture, students are unprepared to engage with real-world issues when they begin to work in practice. If tr.IBE acted as the missing link between traditional professions such as architects, engineers, surveyors and builders at an educational level, perhaps a collaborative mentality that is missing can be instilled, breaching the barriers between pupillage, academia and apprenticeships. tr.IBE accreditation would not only be a way forward to improve collaboration at degree/ apprenticeship level education, but it would allow a route into ‘architectural’ education for professionals from other sectors and educational backgrounds. By being more inclusive at the educational level, the architectural profession will allow itself to adapt and outlive the changes to the role of the architect that we are seeing today. This more fluid accreditation system also aims to open up the role of the designer in the built environment to a wider audience, increasing diversity in the profession.
For building projects to be more sustainable, efficient and responsibly designed, this cross-industry research accreditation would be a requirement for all consultants on any large scale project; in a similar vein to the current requirements for BIM level 2 to be used on large government-funded projects. By encouraging collaboration and eventually making it standard practice, the built environment would no longer live in the past, but adapt towards the future.
References
Finch, Paul, Will Hurst, Richard Waite, and Fran Williams, “Architectural Education: All Change For A Better Journey”, Architects Journal, 2018 <https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/opinion/architectural-education-all-change-for-a-better-journey/10033470.article> [Accessed 12 March 2020]
Green, Brian, “Grounds For Optimism In Improving Profession’S Diversity”, Ribaj.Com, 2019 <https://www.ribaj.com/intelligence/market-analysis-statistics-gender-ethnicity-socio-economic-background-architects> [Accessed 12 March 2020]
Hurst, Will, and Rupert Bickersteth, “Foster-Led Group Of Leading Practices ‘Trailblazes’ Architect Apprenticeships”, Architects Journal, 2018 <https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/foster-led-group-of-leading-practices-trailblazes-architect-apprenticeships/10032800.article> [Accessed 12 March 2020]
Hyde, Rory, Future Practice (New York: Routledge, 2013)
Ing, Will, “ARB NEEDS TO BE KEPT IN CHECK”, Architects Journal, 2006 <https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/home/arb-needs-to-be-kept-in-check/128151.article> [Accessed 12 March 2020]
Malecha, Marvin, “Architectural Education”, Ekistics, 55 (1988), 121–132
McCormack, Kirk, “How Do We Learn To Be Architects?”, Ribaj.Com, 2015 <https://www.ribaj.com/intelligence/how-do-we-learn-to-be-architects> [Accessed 9 March 2020]
Mirza & Nacey Research, RIBA Education Statistics 2015/16 (London: RIBA, 2017) <https://www.architecture.com/-/media/gathercontent/education-statistics/additional-documents/educationstatistics201516pdf.pdf> [Accessed 8 March 2020]
Williams, Finn, “Finn Williams: “Architects Must Work On Ordinary Briefs, For Ordinary People””, Dezeen, 2017 <https://www.dezeen.com/2017/12/04/finn-williams-opinion-public-practice-opportunities-architects-ordinary-briefs-ordinary-people/> [Accessed 12 March 2020]