Who is really advocating for architects?

While reading the Fawcett Society’s new report, commissioned by the RIBA, Build it Together: Women’s Experiences in Architecture, I found it alarming, and yet somehow unsurprising, how little has changed since the last RIBA report on women in architecture in 2015.

Put aside the frankly shocking reports of sexual harassment, and many of the issues that women face in the profession seem to point to poor workplace culture and lack of employment policies.

Whether this is simply a problem for women, though, I am less certain. I think it is entirely possible that the Fawcett Society’s report has picked up on the structural problem of a profession dominated by tiny practices with a lack of support, fairly limited financial reward and a difficult market to operate in.

Hien Nguyen reflected on this recently in her BD column, noting that architecture in the UK is now “increasingly defined by diminishing fees, increased costs, more liability, rising risk and a growing disconnect between architects and the institutions that represent them”.

Should the market rate of an architect not be somewhat more comparable to that of a policy professional?

It was just two weeks later that I received my ARB retention fee email, and saw it had risen again. This in the same month that the ARB is advertising for a new director of policy and communications with an annual salary of £100,000, when the median salary of an architect is £52,000.

Arguably the ARB is simply advertising for a policy role at a market rate which will attract a high-quality candidate, but should the market rate of an architect not be somewhat more comparable to that of a policy professional?

In the past I have been vehemently against protection of function, and I will admit I have now changed my mind. It was the Building Safety Act that led to this shift for me.

The government saw fit to legislate that a “competent person” should be responsible for the design of higher-risk buildings, suggesting that for at least part of the function of British architects the government felt we had reached the tipping point where regulation should intervene. They failed to state that this competent person should be an architect.

I don’t know whether this was a deliberate, if perhaps misguided, attempt to maintain competition in architectural design services, or a lack of knowledge and consideration on the part of the civil servants writing the legislation. What cannot be denied, however, is that if anyone was advocating on behalf of the British architectural profession during the drafting of this legislation, they did it ineffectually.

Perhaps the issue we architects have is that there is no body whose primary function is to advocate for architects. Given how small the vast majority of architectural practices are, this is a significant problem for the profession, as we will never have the lobbying power of, say, the major housebuilders.

The ARB regulates architects to protect the public. The RIBA charter asks it to “advance architecture”. It is perhaps therefore no wonder that in our age of policy driven by political influence and media sound bites the environment in which architects find themselves operating is increasingly so poorly fitting. There is no one advocating for a better environment for architects, as such we are allowing our profession to be set up to fail.

Architects need a body to advocate and lobby for architects. This may sound like bureaucratic overkill. However, we would only be following in the footsteps of other professions who have realised this need before we did.

To take two examples: doctors have the British Medical Association (trade union and professional body), the General Medical Council (the regulator), and various royal colleges (to advocate for healthcare). Solicitors meanwhile have the Law Society to promote both solicitors and the law, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority to regulate the profession.

Even our largest practices are fairly small by UK business standards. We have little to no collective power

Arguably well-qualified building designers are as essential to society as either of the above professions, but there is no respected body willing and able to repeatedly articulate this point on our behalf. Recent attempts to set up architecture unions have focused on reform from within the profession, the need is wider though, the advocacy we need is in the rooms where legislation is drafted and the market conditions defined.

Our profession is mostly small and medium-sized businesses barely clinging onto viability. Even our largest practices are fairly small by UK business standards. We have little to no collective power.

Today we find ourselves watching the government attempting to define the characteristics of a competent designer for a block of flats without using the word “architect”. It would be funny were it not so serious.

Either the RIBA needs to change its royal charter to define itself as advocating for architects and architecture, or we need a chartered institute. Without someone to speak on our behalf, how much longer will we last?