Forward thinking

In an increasingly competitive market, architects must think boldly and imaginatively if they want to secure their future, says Claire Jamieson

Judging by the reaction to Building Futures’ latest report: The Future for Architects?, published last month, discussion about the future of the profession is as timely as ever. With the architect’s role ever more diminished by other professionals, and increasingly by politicians, it has never looked so uncertain. The boom of the millennium years is firmly in the past but architects seem slow to react to the drastically different context. A period of big budgets and equally big architecture has given way to a rapidly shrinking marketplace, pressures from abroad, the growing dominance of technology and a reassessment of the value of design. These factors have had a profound effect on the industry – threatening to transform the entire landscape of the profession.

‘The Future for Architects?’ compiles the findings of a year long study spanning the built environment professions, and conversations with over 40 individuals. Discussions covered three key groups: architects and those working in the expanded fields of architectural practice; clients, developers and consultants; and lastly students and recent graduates of architecture, engineering and planning. The study aimed to compare architects’  long-term view with the reality of the rapidly changing marketplace as projected by the demand side of the profession. It asked: who will design our built environment in 2025, what roles will those trained in architecture be doing then and how will practice have changed? The results were broad ranging and often contradictory, but offer a valuable opportunity for an often insular profession to explore the changes likely to affect the industry over the next 15 years.

Poles apart
The profession has become more competitive since the abolition of the fixed fee scale – which generated a trend of vast undercutting. One of the strongest messages to come out of the study is the likelihood of a deepening polarisation between design-led and commercial practice. This divide has expanded in recent years, when cost has once again leapt to the top of clients’ lists of priorities. And it looks set to continue as practices in emerging economies mobilise to enter the Western market. We are used to American, European and Australasian practices competing with our own, but by 2025 these will probably be accompanied by Asian, South American and Middle Eastern firms. These practices are likely to be large, interdisciplinary, one-stop-shops, well versed in the latest technology and with far lower costs – placing huge pressure on UK practices to compete. To be in with a chance, small and medium sized UK practices must spend more time understanding the financial, social and commercial environment in which their clients operate, and critically, learning to sell their skills with reference to cost. A thorough understanding of the complex relationship between capital costs, whole life costs and carbon costs will be vital. For a profession that began in entrepreneurialism, many architects today are worryingly ill informed on business practice and acumen.

Risk factors
Given all this, it seems likely that practices will also be polarised by size – with larger, commercial, interdisciplinary behemoths at one end, and small, local, general practices at the other. The latter will remain fairly secure, working for small clients with local contractors – though they would be well advised to offer an integrated service so as to be more appealing than plan-drawers. This presently leaves a gap where the classic medium-sized, design-led practices reside. Neither small and local, nor global and integrated, this type of practice could find itself in no-man’s land in future.

This links to another major driver for future practice: architects’ retreat from accountability and risk. Clients suggested that appetite for risk was of the utmost importance when selecting an architect – particularly for the sort of large scale and infrastructural projects increasingly common in emerging markets. Private finance initiatives already hint at a future where clients position themselves far away from risk. This liability is more often than not also resisted by architects, who retreat to the relative safety of the concept design stages – falling further down the pecking order. There is a strong likelihood that engineering or contractor-led practices, who are comfortable carrying the risk on behalf of the client, will gain an even stronger foothold if this trend continues.

Broadening definitions
Architects have for many years had an uneasy relationship with the title ‘architect’, with generation on generation calling for its protection and abolition in equal measures. The architects and part-qualified architects interviewed for this study again displayed a range of opinions on the matter. However, there were fewer voices calling for its protection – with the youngest members of the profession the least wedded to the term. Some practices felt that the term came with its own set of preconceptions, and was even likened to a ‘brand’ associated with a narrow set of services and a specific way of working that did not represent the reality of their firm. Although architects have lost parts of their repertoire to other professionals in the last few decades, they are increasingly taking on new ground and putting design thinking to use across a range of creative problem solving tasks.

Architects we spoke to were working in urban design, brief development, community consultation, branding, interior design, lighting, product design, industrial design, installation design – and the list goes on. These self-styled ‘spatial agencies’, ‘creative consultants’ and ‘design houses’ are driven by their ability to move easily between disciplines, with a flexible approach that responds well to market changes. For them, and for the students and graduates of architecture, the term ‘architect’ represents an outmoded form a practice which pigeonholes their services. Progressively, more and more practices are formalising their diverse offerings with spin-off companies branded in a different way to their architectural practice. In doing so, architects find themselves sitting on the client side of the project, consulting non-competitively with other architects and, importantly, in a better position to charge for their less conventional services.

In response to this growing trend, the regulatory and professional bodies might also need to consider shifting their own definitions of what it means to be an architect in the 21st century. Looser and broader definitions would enable professionals to move more easily into a wider range of career paths and offer more multifarious services.

If the definitions of architectural practice are evolving, then it stands to reason that the education system must also be under pressure to re-examine how it prepares students for the world of practice. Current criticism remains in the realm of graduates not being ready for practice in a technical sense, with a call for better experience of the construction process, project management and costing skills. In this respect, the next wave of graduates could be well placed to act as the lead consultant – able to oversee the building process in its entirety. These are certainly skills that would benefit graduates in the future, with the addition of a grounding in business skills and the related vocabulary.

However, a more fundamental change in education and validation to reflect the richness of what an architect does could radically enhance the position of graduates. Routes to registration that do not depend on a traditional set of skills pointing towards equally traditional practice would enable students to train in architecture and move into diverse parts of the broader construction industry. Of the clients and consultants interviewed for the study, a surprising number had a background in architecture – which they believed enabled them to carry out other roles with a more dynamic, enquiring mind. Distinct routes through the education system nurture design professionals for roles in high-level consultancy, and as developers and clients they could radically readdress the pecking order of architects, providing the opportunity for more influence. Such ideas must be acknowledged given a future where a graduate architect can expect to be the lowest earning professional in the construction industry after five years of paying unprecedented education fees.

Battle for the future
One of the biggest and most unyielding challenges facing architects in the years to come is the continuing competition between the profession and the rest of the construction industry for influence over their clients, in a context where the public is often not convinced that it likes what architects produce. Architects must do much more to prove their value to a highly critical society – a perception that has been exacerbated in recent months by the government. All professions are under pressure to continually evolve, proving they add value at a reasonable cost – architects face an even tougher battle against misconceptions about their contribution and the negative associations of a few. If this impasse is not negotiated in the coming years those trained as architects will struggle to grasp the exceptional opportunities out there. It would be tragic if in 2025 architectural professionals are still fighting today’s battles for recognition of the huge contribution they can make to society. The future lies in the hands and minds of the emerging generation, whose enthusiasm and willingness to expand the role of an architect into exciting, diverse and rewarding fields could signal a welcome break from the stigmas of the past.

Building Futures Research team: Dickon Robinson (chair), John Worthington (founder DEGW) and Caroline Cole (founder director Colander)