We hear that architects often resort to either buying jobs or at least flaying the flesh off their fees’ bones just to stay alive. Cutthroat price-slashing. Race to the bottom. Call it what you will.

I’ve heard this so often over so many years now – the latest time being in a recent Building Design piece by Nicholas Jewell – that I’ve internalised it as an eternal truth.

If it is true (and it probably is – no smoke without fire, they say), then it stinks.

And yet, no client wants a poor-quality service from their architect. No client has the power to compel architects to drop their fees, and you can’t blame them for going with the most economic option.

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