Duncan Baker-Brown announces RIBA presidential bid with focus on smaller regional practices

Brighton University lecturer Duncan Baker-Brown has announced his bid to be the next RIBA president, promising a greater focus on the needs of smaller regional practices over larger London-based firms.

Baker-Brown, who is also an author, climate activist and the founder of East Sussex-based practice BakerBrown, said he would bring a perspective “grounded in lived experience across practice, education and international policy”.

Founded in 1994, BakerBrown currently has a team of six and focuses on small low-carbon residential and community projects with its past schemes including The House That Kevin Built, a home built from organic materials which was televised on a special live series of Grand Designs in 2008.

While Baker-Brown said he fully supports current RIBA president Chris Williamson’s campaigns to reform the Architects Act, reinstate T7 apprenticeships and strengthen the professional standing of architects, he said his presidency would bring a “different emphasis”.

“It would be more regionally grounded, more practice‑focused, and more attentive to the needs of the majority of members who do not work in large London practices,” Baker-Brown said. 

“It would also strengthen the role and visibility of our international chapters, whose contribution to the RIBA’s global relevance I deeply value.”

In his manifesto, he pledged to decentralise national events while RIBA’s 66 Portland Place headquarters is closed for refurbishment, expand local initiatives funding and address the structural challenges facing women in the profession.

He said he would also press for more affordable professional indemnity insurance, more cost-effective access to the NBS Specification Writer and more affordable entry routes to the RIBA Principal Designer, Conservation Architect, and forthcoming Lead Carbon Designer registers.

Baker-Brown said the proposed single construction regulator, part of a series of post-Grenfell government reforms of building safety, offered an opportunity to better define the professional function of architects in regulation.

“The RIBA must articulate the value of architects more confidently and consistently—to government, to clients, and across the construction sector—based on what we do, not simply on who we are,” he said.

He said he would also bring his own experience at negotiating with government on behalf of RIBA - including lobbying for a reduction in VAT on residential retrofit - to strengthen the voice of the institute “so that architects are heard where decisions are actually made”.

Voting for this year’s RIBA presidential elections will open on 15 June and close on 26 June.