The past president of the RIBA calls for bold thinking and institutional change in order that we can build better
I enter 2026 with two aims: protect the public purpose of architecture and raise the productive capacity of our industry. Both need institutional change and a sharper discipline about social, environmental and economic value.
In about 15-years cycles, technology rewrites the rules that govern productive output. The PCs, the web, and the cloud platforms each reshaped industry.
Generative AI is the next platform shift, and early signs suggest that it could be bigger than the internet. The independent analyst Benedict Evans calls this “AI eats the world”; a cycle of bundling and unbundling, where incumbents absorb, start-ups disrupt, and workflows fracture before they settle.
AI could multiply capacity and productivity, just as the steam engines did for Britain all those years ago
For architecture, as a professional service, it means more than faster rendering. It could also mean many things, such as rethinking design-to-delivery processes and embedding intelligence into specification, as well as using AI to interrogate carbon, cost and compliance in real-time.
Done well, this could multiply capacity and productivity, just as the steam engines did for Britain all those years ago – five times the effective labour without five times the headcount.
Productive use of AI and skills reform
If AI is to help, it must raise entry-level capability rather than erase it. The near-term labour market picture is mixed.
Automation looks to squeeze some junior roles. However, the broader policy signal in the UK is supportive: national compute, supercomputing capacity. Research resources and local adoption funds are set to expand. For the built environment, that should mean faster optioneering, better clash detection, richer understanding materials, and stronger whole-life carbon accounting, without hollowing out early years, formative training.
History warns us of the downsides. In the 1980s, General Motors spent $45bn on robotics to beat its Japanese rivals. Its results led to robots welding doors shut, creating more indirect labour than they eliminated. Now, an MIT report shows that 95% of enterprises’ AI pilots deliver zero financial return.
Why? In short, automation was bolted onto opaque workflows rather than fixing them. Architecture as a professional service is vulnerable to the same trap.
Our processes run on hallway conversations, pin-up critiques, undocumented approvals and change management, with archaeological spreadsheets. If we train models on this sloppy, tacit process, we get high-speed replication of bad practice.
By contrast, the antidote is the Toyota principle of “jidoka”, which translates as automation with a human touch and in this context means “don’t automate what you haven’t mastered manually”. Detect, fix, instrument the workflow, then automate in small, local experiments which, according to the Toyota model, will beat massive CapEx bets.
Architecture, design and construction will advance when the industry allows. This is what Darun Acemoglu and James A Robinson, joint recipients of the Nobel Prize in economic sciences, call “creative destruction”: retiring brittle habits so that new, more inclusive frameworks can take root.
That renewal spreads expertise, dislodges gatekeeping, and equips us to meet a changed public outlook, to welcome incentives that benefit human achievement.
Finance that subverts purpose
Hyper-financialisation changes the decision-making logic. When capital’s sole aim is return, function becomes whatever feeds the market, and purpose collapses solely to making profits. Architecture and the built environment are poor financial instruments; left to private capital alone, they will be underfunded and underprovided.
Parks and museums exist because we, the public, choose not to neglect them. In 2026, the same principle will apply to civic buildings, social infrastructure and the generosity of public space: if we do not call for them and engineer procurement to protect them, the market will make a different choice in favour of more profit only.
‘Stability’ was the headline of this 2025 autumn Budget. But stability can become a pretext for inertia
The UK’s fiscal stance compounds the risk. “Stability” was the headline of this 2025 autumn Budget. But stability can become a pretext for inertia.
With promised investment and skills, the supply-side reforms are modest, expected to lift GDP by only small fractions over a decade. This is in opposition to radical growth strategy.
To signal this, procurement, planning and insurance need to move in step, so that we don’t end next year with lots more announcements, but few shovels in the ground.
What to do in practice? First, reassert public purpose in contracts. Embed social value, access and long-term maintenance in briefs and commercial terms. Purpose cannot survive if it is absent from the legal instruments we sign.
Second, guard the pipeline of talent. Pair AI-enabled workflows with structured learning, so that juniors lead audits, coordination and analysis, and do not become simple prompt engineers.
Third, use institutional renewal to widen participation. Remove needless barriers to entry and progression. Curiosity beats conformity.
The platform shift is real. The question is whether we use it to build better or to replicate and scale the old order. Our choices in 2026 will decide whether architecture remains a public service or becomes collateral in a race for larger capital returns.
No comments yet