The increasingly desultory spectacle of the RIBA’s slide towards irrelevance makes for uncomfortable watching. Recent events may have raised a wry chuckle in some quarters, but I suspect few architects actually enjoyed the sight of the RIBA becoming close to a public laughing stock. Although the humiliation has been painfully personal for the president, the reputational damage is arguably more widely shared.

The sense that something is wrong with the profession runs much deeper than one marital infidelity. The reason this story of a RIBA president going missing at the height of a national crisis has resonated is because it seems to symbolise an underlying problem. Architects sense their own waning influence and professional marginalisation. Whether we are RIBA members or not this raises challenging questions for all of us about why we as architects have lost our status within construction and wider public discourse and how, or even if, we should seek to reclaim that leadership role.

An obvious question is whether we need the RIBA at all in facing these challenges. For years, many architects have decided simply to shun the organisation. After all, membership currently has no relationship to professional registration and RIBA appears to have little influence with government or anyone else, leaving some to ponder “what’s the point?”.

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