World watching

This internationally-focused issue of RIBAJ is driven partly by the emergence of new markets for architects – several thousands of our readers are based overseas, and the places they tend to work change over time – and partly by simple curiosity.

How do we get to parts of the world that are not our normal stamping-ground? Why, you ask people on the ground and in the know. David Adjaye, for instance, is an architect who operates internationally but is especially knowledgeable about Africa and has famously travelled and recorded the length and breadth of the continent. So we went to talk to him about how things are – very rapidly – changing in Africa. Elsewhere in this issue 14 commentators from around the world select what and who they think is significant right now in their regions. These sometimes stretch the definition of what architecture actually is, and all the better for that.

In the UK, the outlook for practices is lumpy to say the least. Some have almost no work, some are very busy and well paid, some are very busy and finding it increasingly difficult to get paid. And then you get practices like RMJM, which always seems to be in the news for all the wrong reasons. Recently they bought out once-proud YRM, taking on a few senior architects but leaving the rest of the YRM staff (many claiming to be owed several months’ salaries) out in the cold. This was done through an entirely legitimate ‘pre-pack’ arrangement. Then they hit the headlines (not for the first time) for delaying payment to their own staff. No doubt these cash-flow difficulties can be resolved and yes, these are difficult times we are living and working in. Cash flow is an old problem for architects: it is described, with feeling, in Thomas Hardy’s architecture-centred novel ‘A Laodicean’ of 1881. But you can’t help thinking, in the light of recent headlines: whatever happened to the appearance of professionalism?
Hugh Pearman | Editor