George Clarke: “We shouldn’t force people to use architects”
The Urban Forecast
The ARB is investigating whether architects should be legally required for certain work. The profession cannot agree on whether it wants that, and the argument has just gone public.
Protection of function is the proposal that certain building work should legally require an architect, in the way that certain legal and medical work requires a qualified professional. Britain protects the title but not the function: anyone may design a building and submit a planning application, and permitted development defaults to the client unless they appoint someone.
The ARB is looking at changing that as part of wider regulatory reform. Two positions surfaced this month, and they are not close together.
George Clarke argues against. Mandating architects, he warns, risks making the profession look like a pain in the backside, and the case should be made on value rather than on compulsion. It is an argument about how the public sees architects, and it is not an unreasonable one from someone who has spent a career persuading them.
RIBA president Chris Williamson takes the opposite view, and grounds it in safety rather than status.
Every building should be safe and high-quality, but our current regulatory system fails to ensure it.
His case is that reserved activities would guarantee competence at the critical points of a project, which is a different claim from guaranteeing work for architects.
Our read: this argument has been circular for a decade because it has been about status. It is about to stop being circular, because it is becoming about competence in a market where drawing is no longer the scarce skill. When a planning submission can be produced by someone with an address and a few prompts, the question of who is accountable for checking it stops being a professional courtesy and becomes the whole of the argument.