After several years of design work and one project overcoming multiple deferrals at planning committee, Morris + Company has just won planning permission for three major residential and commercial schemes. One might expect Joe Morris to be content but, on the day that BD meets him at his office in central Hackney, he is more focused on the growing complexity of the context in which architects are working.

From squeezed fees and the pressure to deliver on architects’ net zero aspirations, to the way in which the planning system seems to be making the job of architects and their clients ever more difficult, Morris is clearly frustrated with the current state of play.

The business of architecture is often forgotten in the narratives that the profession likes to tell itself. But, as most practitioners know, there is often a significant gap between the perception of a high-prestige, well-remunerated profession and the realities of squeezed fees, ruthless competition and an increasingly regulated and circumscribed space for exerting influence.

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