Jack Pringle has spent much of his career closely connected to the Royal Institute of British Architects. His involvement began early, when he was elected to the council in his twenties. A second spell came with his presidency between 2005 and 2007. He returned again in 2020, at what he describes as “a moment of necessity,” and is now three years into his second term as chair of the RIBA Board.

“We were losing quite a lot of money, so I had to stabilise the budget, which we did,” he recalls of that return. “Of course that meant downsizing the staff, which is never easy or popular.” But the financial crisis was only one part of the picture. “I was acutely aware that the position of the architect in the construction industry is not what it should be,” he says. The wider climate felt equally fraught. “Externally there was also a huge amount going on, not least Grenfell, sustainability, remuneration, Brexit. We’d been in a long recession, which is always really wounding to architects.”

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