I’ve been enjoying the (relative) political calm of the summer parliamentary recess, though bracing myself somewhat before probably one of the most significant shifts in British society in my lifetime. Nobody has any real indication of what the next few months and years will hold – it may all be fine; and it may not. The certainty of the change and the uncertainty of the results has been making me consider the impact Brexit may have on my life – and my work.

Architecture as a profession is fundamentally collaborative, inextricably tied to its patrons and the society from which they spring. As a result, we are directly impacted by societal shifts. In the foreword to Spiro Kostof’s ‘Architect’, Dana Cuff notes that “the architect is substantially governed by the historical conditions of practice. Inspiration and genius, long considered almost supernatural requirements for architectural production, are displaced by social forces like economics and politics.” Cuff may have been writing 19 years ago but her words seem to resonate strongly today, leading me to wonder just how much the architectural profession has been shaped by civilisations’ shifts over time.

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