Sheffield shows

My reviews of both Sheffield schools of architecture shows should appear in the AJ this week.

However, what I really wanted to write was this...

If an employer comes to me to ask which of Sheffield's schools he should employ from, I would reply:

"If you know the answer to your problem is a building, then go to Sheffield Hallam.
However, if you do not already know that the answer to your problem is a building,
or whether or not you have a problem at all,
or even the nature of problemhood in society and whether they exist,
or anything of Louis Althusser's problematic from his Reading Capital,
then try Sheffield University."

Student hardship

From: Steve Parnell
Sent: Thursday June 25, 2009 12:01PM
To: John-Paul Nunes; David Gloster; Sunand Prasad
Subject: hardship scheme for students

Dear John, David, Sunand

I read with interest the article on BD's website about the RIBA's student hardship scheme.

Could I ask why it is that the RIBA don't consider PhD students worthy of support?

After all, the Institute's official line is that:

"The RIBA recognizes the capacity of research to unite the study and practice of architecture and to strengthen links between students and the profession; knowledge is any profession’s most precious asset and research is what underpins it, helping our anticipation of the future.

The Institute is committed to supporting and promoting research in architecture carried out by PhD students, academics and practitioners through schemes including the annual RIBA President's Awards for Research and the RIBA LKE Ozolins Studentship."

Vapid oratory. Offering an award is no good if nobody can afford to finish a PhD in the first place and the Ozolins - the sole studentship formerly offered by the RIBA for the whole country - is now no more. So can you tell me in what way the RIBA supports PhD students in order to enhance the profession's "most precious asset" and link the academy, the profession and practice "in anticipation of the future"?

Architecture as a discipline is already laughable. I beseech you sirs to look up from validation and unto real research as something worthy of financial support before this beloved profession of ours designs itself into an irrelevant corner.

Regards,
Steve Parnell
(hard-up PhD student at Sheffield, the country's 2nd placed architectural research centre according to the most recent RAE, but which offers no funding for PhD students outside of building science (so Corb help the rest))

Blogs vs Blueprint

Fashionably late, I can't help but comment on Tim Abrahams' "Nostalgia is No Substitute for Criticism" bizarre rant against bloggers. As a blogger myself (albeit reluctantly part time), I'm predictably going to be on their side, especially seeing as the four blogs that Abraham's picked out to name are four of my must-reads: Jonathan Bell's Things, Sam Jacob's Strange Harvest, Charles Holland's Fantastic Journal and Owen Hatherley's Sit down man....
Now these writers are all quite capable of competent ripostes themselves and it's interesting to note their typical responses. Sam Jacob simply changed his title to "Not A Valid Research Process for Architecture" - an elegantly cool and minimal nose-snub. Charles Holland and Owen Hatherley responded with posts dedicated to the rant - Holland more defending writing about the past, and Hatherley characteristically more aggressively in possibly the finest post I've read of his, attacking the point of why the future is so much better to write about anyway. Both Holland and Hatherley seem to object to the word "nostalgia" as a pejorative term, as does Bell in the introduction to a couple of posts where he accurately rebuffs contemporary architecture magazines for their role in "contemporary architecture exist[ing] to be seen, consumed via a through choice images, rather than actually experienced."

It's strange that Abrahams chose these four bloggers, as though they represented the biggest threat to a barely-read magazine like Blueprint (last audited circulation I could get was 6,453). Jonathan Bell is a successful writer in his own right, currently writing for The Morning News. Owen Hatherley has only recently become the must-have read for dead-tree format media, writing for the New Statesman, the Guardian, Building Design and probably more - I can't keep up with him. Meanwhile, Jacob's and Holland's full time jobs are architects for quite probably the UK's only current avant-garde (taking Bürger's popular definition of avant-garde theory) architectural practice, FAT. While I am guarded about architects also writing criticism (for quite Tafurian reasons), it is this aspect of them engaging in new media that interests me about them and their practice of architecture. They also write for dead-tree format journals too - Icon, the AJ and probably more.

Abraham's accusation comes in the first paragraph,

"Hitherto print journalists have had a tendency to either dismiss or overly praise their online competitors. Both of those approaches is born of fear. With this industry in tumult, the worst has already happened and we can take a long hard look at what is going on online. Here, one might think that there would at least be some optimism and some vision of the future. This is unfortunately not the case."

Blogs continue the long tradition of samizdat publishing. Free to write and free to read, there's a lot of trash out there. But there's a lot of really good, thoughtful stuff too and it requires curators like Bell with Things to help navigate it. I scan Things' links whenever it comes out, maybe click through on a handful and maybe end up reading only one or two. But I trust it. In the past, it provided me with my first accepted conference paper. And in the recent link to Naomi Stead's "The Rocket-Baroque Phase of the Icecream Vernacular" will surely form a part of a future workshop or lecture. In the archaeological discipline, there exists a snobbishness from those who re-construct the past from artefacts to those who do the same using documents, which is considered a much simpler process. With the wired world, we're moving into a third state of mediation of the real world and future archaeologists - those at the very bottom of the future status hierarchy no doubt - will be glad of the curatorship of things like Things. At worst this could be seen as a meta-mediation of the real-world - a mediation of mediation - but in reality, the online world is mediating it at the same distance as the old media, just using a different platform. So no, the digital world is not the real world, but then again neither is the old media.

It is not the job of architectural critics to project the future. That is the designers' responsibility. Critics explain, interpret, contextualise, judge, evaluate. In fact, history, theory and criticism are the holy trinity that form the godhead of architectural knowledge: "There is no criticism, only history" famously wrote Tafuri. "History is, of course, my academic discipline. Criticism is what I do for money" said Banham in the speech where he called for rigorous theory to underpin architecture in 1964. This explicit architectural knowledge is the other side of that tacit architectural knowledge of the design process - two sides of the same coin. When critics or historians project the future, they create their own architectural project and lose the distance to provide independent judgment and appraisal. Abrahams doesn't include a successful (in terms of hits) blog like Dezeen in his list of criminal blogs precisely because Dezeen offers nothing more than a PR feed. No comment, criticism or thought. It can be no more accused of nostalgia as of being interesting. It's something to keep the proles in their place, prevent them from actively thinking too much - nothing that might upset the status quo or existing hierarchy. Let us not forget that publishing is an instrument of capitalism, ultimately in the hands of the wealthy and powerful entrepreneur. It is not in their interests for this system to break. Pesky thinkers who can join a couple of words together like Hatherley are dangerous - more so when they have a not-so-hidden agenda that fails to promote the widening gap between the richest and poorest in society.

In a self-serving society where the politicians have been caught with their hands in the till and where bankers continue to cheat everyone else out of incredulously vast sums of money, demonstrating the entire political and financial systems to be corrupt, it's good to know that there are still independently minded and able critics to call our attention to the bits that the mainstream press can't or won't write about. That's the great thing about the web and about blogs. So what if they link to each other? So what if they're nostalgic (although I'll leave that to the others to argue)? They provide much-needed original content that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day. Or they can provide eye-candy if that's all you want too. And for that, may they long prosper and even multiply - in which case we'll need more curators.

Or maybe it was simply all a ruse to get some links and traffic and debate to a flagging Blueprint web site? In which case it was a quite brilliant move.

Sheffield 3: Gleadless Valley

I had the good fortune to spend a day last week with Owen Hatherley flanning about Sheffield. We spent a good while in the hidden secret of Gleadless Valley which, in some wonderful and rare English Spring time sunshine, could have almost been mistaken for a Mediterranean idyl had it not been for the shirtless tattooed louts and scenic rubbish strewn about.



But its reputation preceded it because it is a quite magnificent place. As a "sink estate", it also has one of the worst reputations in Sheffield. Taking the tram south from the centre of town, we climbed up past Park Hill to witness some surprising views back to the centre which is still in an eternal indecision between demolition and reconstruction. The tram stops at Manor Top where cheap TV shows like "Police, Camera, Action" are regularly filmed due to the propensity of its youths for joy riding. Then we alight at Gleadless where we take a 10 minute walk down the hill to the valley.



These pictures are of one of Sheffield's worst estates. If you can't believe me, read These links from the local Sheffield Star.



Gleadless Valley was designed and built coincidentally with Park Hill between 1955 and 1962 under the supervision of city architect J.L. Womersley, but what a contrast to its more famous urban brother down the hill. There are quite a mixture of housing types all picturesquely scattered across the landscape and taking advantage of Sheffield's greatest asset - its topography.
It is reminiscent of the Sharawaggi Picturesque that the Architectural Review was trying to promote in the immediate post-war period, where modern architecture was aestehtically composed in the landscape. It is commonly thought that the 1951 Fetival of Britain was the culmination of this aesthetic ideal, but a trip around Gleadless Valley would put paid to that. It does lack the variety of building types, with only a row of shops, a pub or two and a church intermingled between the housing, but otherwise, the composition is always surprising, always related to its natural setting and consists of close-up to long-distance views so you can quite clearly understand your position in the environment.

A number of Segal-esque decked timber terraces back into the hills.



And a little further on, the brick terraces slide down the hill with a complementary monopitch



Like Park Hill, decks project along the buildings until they hit the ground so that there is always level access at some point:



Aware of the danger of hyperbole, there is even an whiff of Southern California about the grouping and lines of some of the blocks when viewed from below:




The buildings look tired but generally kempt and besides the obvious uPVC window invasion, still very much in the original design. The flat roofs are still flat, for example, which surprised me. Clearly, as these properties are council owned, it's a different story to Pessac where the owners decided to completely disfigure Corb's vision (see Philippe Boudon's "Lived In Architecture" of 1972). Nevertheless, I didn't witness great swathes of graffiti or vandalism other than some dubiously retrofitted doors and windows.



The streets are not clogged with cars as the city's more central terraced roads are and there is such an abundance of untouched green space (other than the mower that had recently left summer's first smell of freshly cut grass) that you are left wondering whether the so-called "luxury" flats being built in the centre are missing the real definition of "luxury". You can easily imagine what this area would be like today, were it developed speculatively. Cul-de-sacked detached houses stacked cheek by jowel with garages as the houses main selling feature. No room to swing a cat, never mind a three point turn and gardens that are smaller than the 6 yard area of a football pitch.



One woman was bewildered by our presence and asked us why were taking photos of Gleadless Valley. She's clearly lost any confidence in her value and therefore in that of her surroundings. She's been told she's worthless so many times, she has come to believe it. And therefore where she lives is crap too. The problems of Gleadless are entirely sociological and nothing to do with the architecture, a situation much the same as any sink estate. We will see what change the redevelopment of Park Hill has once its redevelopment is complete in another 8 years. For me, this valley makes me question the potential for architecture to be able to design away problems and make everyone's life better by design because it's not simply beautiful, it's stunningly beautiful. And although the building is only to 1950s standards, it is well designed. Yet the statistics on unemployment, crime, teenage pregnancy and exam results are some of - if not the - worst in Sheffield. The roots of this valley's problems are education and unemployment and the dissolution of a society's values where everything is evaluated by a bottom line, be it on a spreadsheet or a celebrity.

The new Architectural Review

In a piece called “Retrospect” in the Architectural Review of February 1971, the leaving editor of over 30 years, J.M. Richards wrote about the role of the architectural magazine in architectural production and the qualities he looked for and responsibilities he tried to imbue in the AR during that period. In short, he believed that “helping to sharpen the perception of architects and their clients is one of the aims of an architectural magazine.” He also believed, however, that the magazine should positively criticise bad architecture:

“another essential role of the architectural magazine: criticism – of architects and all their works, of the opportunities they are given and of the conditions that allow, or don't allow, them to make their proper contribution to the world.
There is still not enough informed and constructive criticism of architecture, and it is sometimes asked why architectural magazines do not pillory the bad buildings, instead – as they mostly do at present – of criticising them only by implication; by ignoring them and paying attention instead to the buildings they think worth serious discussion. Perhaps they should attack the bad more positively, though this would make it all the more necessary to reach beyond subjective and appearance criticism; to look critically not only at the result but at the programme.
Criticism in my experience had not been made easier by the touchiness of many members of the architectural profession, who claim to approve of it but resent its being applied to themselves.”

Monica Pidgeon, the nonagenarian editor of Architectural Design between 1946 and 1975 for example, admitted when I interviewed her recently that the policy for AD was to do just that – ignore the bad and promote what they considered the good. Richards goes on to astutely observe that “the difficulty becomes clear when it is remembered that the significant dramatic criticism is not written in periodicals circulating chiefly among actors and stage producers, nor significant art criticism written in periodicals for practising artists. Architectural criticism, of which much more is needed, should not be so dependent on the architectural magazines, it should find a place alongside the dramatic and art and music and book criticism in the layman's press – daily, Sunday and weekly.”

It is easily forgotten by architects that the architectural press form the trade magazines of the architectural profession and the public in general simply does not concern itself with it. The flavour of architectural criticism in the national press is quite different. It necessarily needs to be dumbed down, while maintaining relevance to the philistines that form society. Richards disapproved of the architectural autonomy that architects strive for in their work which inevitably becomes reflected in their magazines:

“Architects' tendency to concern themselves with a limited private world – to work, in effect, for the approbation of other architects, or become satisfied by in-language and plug-in gimmicks – is what makes an editor despair. Such private worlds are really an escape from the realities that remain architects' only claim to be taken seriously by society.”

That was 1971. Fast forward 38 years and Kieran Long has been editor of AR's sister, the Architects' Journal, for about 18 months and has recently become editor-in-chief of that and the AR, hence this month's redesign. Although almost everybody I ask considers Architecture Today to be the best UK architectural periodical, the AR is arguably still the most revered.


It was established in 1896 and made its name in the 1920s and 1930s when it was largely responsible for introducing the modern style to these shores from the continent. Since then it has become the respectable daddy of architectural monthlies that sets the benchmark for what constitutes architecture. To be published in the AR still really validates the work as architecture. But recently it had lost its way and I for one hadn't picked up a copy for years because it had become so staid and predictable. Other than tweaks, it hadn't had a redesign in format since January 1985 and so was feeling very weary. Rumours had been abounding that it had gone the same way as l'architecture d'aujourd'hui. Monica Pidgeon was saying that she had heard that the AR was no more and I had to reassure her that although changes were taking place, it was still alive and trying to kick. So what of the first kick of the new regime?


There is a brief history of its design here at Things to look at and here at Eye magazine, concentrating more on the typography. The first thing to notice is the logo, which harks back to the masthead of pre-1985 but with a 21st century zoom which is strong and nicely retro and works well as a symbol of both tradition and progress. Inside, the overall design is clean and won't offend the older AR readers, but is not going to set any designer's hearts racing. It's clearly from the same stable as the AJ and looks very much like I remember Icon a couple of years ago, which isn't surprising seeing as both Kieran and designer Violetta Boxill previously worked there. One thing that this does bring is the highlighted yellow marker style words within the pieces, which for me is preferable to corny summaries at the end of an article in order to get a quick gist. The layout is based on a flexible grid with some photos framed in white space and others bleeding right to the edge of the page. The drawings have that bland quality that all computer drawings have today and it would have been nice to see the AR set a higher standard for quality of architectural drawings seeing as drawings are essentially one third of the content of architectural magazines. There are no line weights for a start. The long sections on pages 78-79 don't line up for no apparent reason and the cross section on page 66 has no labelling whatsoever. I would be disappointed if my students handed in drawings like these. The logos for the sections "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA" I think are a missed opportunity and for me neither echo the past nor beckon a future and the cyan colour always reminds me of formica for some reason. Judge for yourself in the "ID" picture (4 below) whether the "ID" logo works or is lost. And "MARGINALIA" (5 below) requires its own column rather than being integrated into the rest of the page. So I have to say I'm a little disappointed in the design. I think most architecture part 2 students with InDesign could quite easily match it today. While I don't expect Archigram, I think it's unambitious and lacks any edge when compared to other architecture magazines, such as Mark which is a beautiful piece of design in its own right.


Enough of the design, what of the content? This issue of the new AR is divided into three sections: "VIEW", "BUILDINGS" and the back pages of "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA". All apart from "BUILDINGS", I believe, are taken from section names in previous generations of ARs. I understand that themes will be introduced occasionally to issues when a collection of buildings requires it which is a sensible move. All the buildings are now numbered and mapped onto the world, which is also a nice idea. It will be interesting to see how this is collated and used in the future - whether it'll be searchable online at the much improved AR web site, for example. The buildings in this issue noticeably come from the Western world - USA, Europe, Japan. Hopefully there will be more variety in the future and a greater mix of what constitutes architecture considered. The critique of the buildings doesn't offer much more than description, though, and there's never any reference to the drawings or pictures. This is normal in today's architectural press, and I doubt if the more critical edge that Kieran brought to the AJ with excellent writers such as Kester Rattenbury will transfer to the AR. Being published in the AR validates architecture and that has become its function, rather than to criticise poor design. The outrage column that Ian Nairn started with great vitriol in 1955 had become its own self-parody a long time ago. However, previous ARs had sections called “criticism” and I long for the return of the campaigns from yesteryear. Whether this can be expected in a magazine run for profit rather than a hobby (as it practically was for Hubert de Cronin Hastings) remains to be seen. The AR is now mainly sold overseas and its "Rule Britannia" days are over so a campaign such as "Manplan", which makes great reading today but was suicide for the magazine back in 1970, will be even more impossible. Yet J.M. Richards' words from 1971 ring in my ears.


The other new-old sections are a welcome step forward. "VIEW" discusses current affairs that affect architecture in the wider context. It's readable and informative and hopefully will maintain relevance and interest. The rear sections of "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA" are shorter reviews of the wider context of art and architecture - again more varied than the previous regime and demonstrating a wider cultural mix. Hopefully this won't lose the more serious long book review, for example.


The great period of AR – up to about 1970 under the editorship of J.M. Richards – saw great articles on the holy trinity of history, theory and criticism that later became canonised into architectural folklore, such as Colin Rowe's “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa” from March 1947's AR. It would be great if the AR could re-invoke more serious investigation on more imaginative historical and theoretical issues by the world's best architectural writers and thinkers, as well as maintain its cultural ambitions. That doesn't mean it should become like today's AD, which seems to exist in its own bubble and whose relevance to today's architects is dubitable.


Inevitably I compare any architectural magazine with my fictional perfect ideal version. This would have a contemporary design that made the whole look like one, like Arts & Architecture achieved under Entenza and Travers where even the adverts became part of the whole design. The typography would be a major part of the design of the page and merge with drawings and stunning photographs like the original Plus. The drawings would have character and transmit information in their style as well as content. This perfect magazine would have a variety of pieces relevant to architects from the arts and social sciences, as well as science and technology, much like some of WIRED's best features over the past decade. The criticism of buildings would include drawings and diagrams integrated into the text and photographs in order to tell a unified story and explain, enlighten and educate in the manner of Edward Tufte. It would include the occasional off-the-wall historical or theoretical piece by an interesting writer to bring new angles on current debates, or introduce new thinking. It would have pretentiously lagubrious reviews of books and exhibitions. It would capture research, either from the universities or from practice, and even instigate its own in order to pour cold water on stale thinking and paint a real picture of what's going on in the architectural world. It would publish this in funky diagrammatic form as a collectable series. It would take a stand on important architectural issues such as sustainability and education and promote high ethical values. It would provoke critical thinking rather than simply print nice pictures. It would integrate its dead-tree format with the online world and provide a platform for feedback and real-time debate. This online world would be a much wider receptacle of more fluid publication, the best of which could be compiled in with specially commissioned pieces for the paper magazine, to be published as and when it was ready. It would, of course, be international, and actively seek out new talent from the existing Western tradition as well as the more forgotten places. It would not participate in awards.


With the AJ and now the AR, Kieran seems to be creating a pair of cultural magazines for architects which add more to the discipline of architecture and its culture than the profession per se. They are both, without doubt, better than they were under the previous regimes and I sincerely hope they continue their improvement and approach something like my ideal. The architectural press is, after all, where 21st century architecture occurs.

Pedal powered parkour

From the YouTube info: "Filmed over the period of a few months in and around Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby, this video of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill features probably the best collection of street/street trials riding ever seen."

Move over skateboarders and parkour.

Letter from Valencia

"Architecture needs activity like a sentence needs a verb."

Mark 20 (due out next month) will see me writing the "Letter from Valencia" which is, in my very humble opinion, the least worst piece I have ever written on architecture. Yes, there's some St. Calatrava of course (you can't avoid it in Valencia) but there's plenty of other stuff too.

It also includes photos some of my millions of photos, unfortunately in black and white. So here are some colour ones as a taster.






Above is design student Adrián Pinilla and his dog who renew bikes in a small converted butcher's. Think "Pimp my ride", but on two wheels and pedal powered.

More to come on Sheffield here when I get time to write it up, including Castle Markets, Gleadless Valley and Park Hill. I'm also due a review of the new AR and Wired magazines.

Protectionism

BD this week are running a story on architects' desire to protect their function which has been an ongoing theme in the debate on the profession ever since the title was protected by the Architects (Registration) Act of 1938.

I find this idea very strange, not only because protectionism is being frowned upon by everyone at this moment of global financial woe, but because it is far from clear what function it is that architects want to protect.

Whenever I talk to architects about this, their reasonings are vague and unclear. Some diligently and blindly follow the ARB line that "the consumer should be protected". However, they are unclear of who that consumer is. If it's the client, then we're talking about the wealthy and powerful who of course have rights, but are not the unsuspecting and downtrodden of society. If it's the end user, then fair enough. Some architects even build upon this argument that it's their responsibility to make the building stand up, which seems dumb. That's the engineers' and manufacturers' responsibility and what their respective training, PII and collateral warrenties are for. The ARB line is, in fact, backwards and registration is there to protect the architect from the rest of society - in other words, to maintain the monopoly.

Another argument is that architects have 7 years training and so are the best people to design and build buildings. Let's look at this in more detail:

5 years of the 7 is in school. Roughly 90% of a student's time is spent on design problems and around 65% (depending on the school of course) of their final grade goes on assessment of this design work. One of the 7 years is simply a "year out" in industry, which equates to anybody starting a career and learning the ropes in anything. The final year is another career starter year while enrolled on a part-time professional practice course. The course I did lasted 8 days. So the architect's education is heavily weighted towards design. But is this the function that the architects want to protect? As Andrew Saint argued in The Image of the Architect (Yale University Press, 1983, p.61),

"It did not take long to discover that the only broad line of defence within the Soanean formulation, the only element in architecture to which some other professional group did not have a prior or better claim, was 'art'. Yet ironically, those most concerned with professional dignity and exclusiveness were in practice those least taken up with matters of art, and vice versa."

The design of the built environment matters greatly (especially to architects). The "design-led" architects can probably be entrusted to design buildings, but there are many others working in the "commercial" sector who probably cannot. Yes, they are qualified, but no, they don't particularly care or are not particularly good at it. And if we are to say that the architect's function to be protected is the design of buildings, then surely we should protect the other design industries similarly, like jewellery design, automotive design, and furniture design. After all, the designers in those areas have studied equally hard in order to master their trades and crafts. So no more furniture for Zaha, jewellery for Gehry or cars and buses for Foster. At least, without them becoming suitably qualified. There is also urban design, of course, which architects often claim to be able to do, but largely have no idea about, having only ever really considered individual buildings rather than the space between them. Architectural courses barely touch upon urban design and an architect will probably not be able to quote any theory beyond Kevin Lynch's half century old "The Image of the City". This is another related but quite separate profession, and as important as - if not more important than - architecture itself and it deserves its own qualifications and accreditation.

Design as the function of architects is a bit of a red herring. It's what architectural culture is all about - what gets published and discussed, but it does not form the majority of the architect's role. Looking at the official RIBA plan of work (pdf file) and we see that design - at a push - constitutes the first 5 of the 11 stages. "Appraisal" and "Design Brief" are important stages, but are often considered "winning the job" and are not design per se. "Concept" and "Design Development" are the meat and bones of design. "Technical Design" can be done by architects, but it is not something they are trained to do particularly well and besides, there is a whole architectural technician profession that really has first grabs on this stage. They are trained to do it and on the whole do it much better than architects.

RIBA scrapped the indicative fee scale for architects in 2003 (the recommended fee scale was scrapped in 1992 and the obligatory fee scale scrapped in 1982), but previously it was recommended that 55% of the final fee covered these first 5 stages. So this all indicates that design (if we are being generous) comprises about half of an architect's role. However, the reality is of course very different. In a recent lecture at London Met University, Alex Ely of Mae Architects (a well regarded "design led" practice) admitted that less than 15% of his time was spent on design. In my personal experience, that is an over estimate. So is design really what architects do and the function that should be protected? It is certainly the controlled and controllable aspect of an autonomous art.

This is the "art" side of the eternal "art versus profession" debate. Let's consider the "profession" side (it won't take long). The remainder of the architect's responsibilities is to get the building built. The "Soanean formulation" that Saint cited above is this:

"The business of the architect is to make the designs and estimates, to direct the works, and to measure and value the different parts; he is the intermediate agent between the employer, whose honour and interest he is to study, and the mechanic, whose rights he is to defend. His situation implies great trust; he is responsible for the mistakes, negligences, and ignorances of those he employs; and above all, he is to take care that the workmen's bills do not exceed his own estimates."
(John Soane, Plans, Elevations and Sections of Buildings, 1788, p.7)

And this was what the founders of the RIBA took as the original ideal functions of an architect, dividing architecture as a service from speculative contracting and building and later, from surveying.

So the other half (in theory, much more in practice) of an architect's role is supervision of the building on site, and dealing with all the contractual stuff. The architect has a great deal of the client's money at stake here, and so it is impossible to underestimate the scale of this responsibility. It is what the Professional Indemnity Insurance is for and what the architect is likely to get sued over. However, it's a role that is learned on the job and something that other professions are equally able to do (if not more so) and probably more interested in doing. I'm talking about the professional Project Manager, a role that has appeared since the last recession and the rise of the Quantity Surveyor. It's largely a messy, administrative "contingent" job. Is this the function that architects want protecting? I doubt it.

There is an argument that only architects should be able to apply for planning permission on buildings over a certain size, as they do, I believe, in France and Italy. However, the architect then simply becomes a stamp and you will without doubt be left with people simply paying for the architect to stamp their own drawings.

So the protection of function, beyond Sunand Prasad's claims that it is unworkable and probably illegal, is quite simply the desperate cries of a dying profession, deluded and confused as to what its role in society really is.

What about protection of "title" that the 1938 act brought in? Similarly deluded, I would argue. It simply legally assigns an English word to a select group of people, which is as irksome as it is unworkable. Nobody outside the architectural profession understands this protection. Nobody - even architectural students - understands the difference between the ARB and the RIBA. It's not an education thing because you can't simply take an English word and ascribe it a new meaning and expect everyone to fall in line - life doesn't work like that.

What should happen is that the ARB should be abolished, along with protection of title and the RIBA should be the standard to which all architects aspire. You wouldn't be able to join the RIBA without the accredited qualifications and this would divide the "real" architects from the also-rans. It would also give the RIBA a real meaning and reason for existing, which it scarcely has at the moment. If architects are so precious about the size of their education and how valuable it is to society, then let this speak for itself in a self-regulated profession. Let this education compete in the real world and demonstrate its worth.

It is not surprising that architects want their monopoly protected. This is what professions are for. As I've mentioned before, George Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying that "All professions are conspiracies against the laity". Professions are a product of both sixteenth-century history and twentieth-century sociology and essentially about defining a knowledge base, abstracting it, claiming ownership of it and then servicing access to it (for a fee). The RIBA itself was founded in 1834 "for facilitating the acquirement of architectural knowledge, for the promotion of the different branches of science connected with it, and for establishing an uniformity and respectability of practice in the profession".

So architects need to get it straight between themselves what this knowledge is that they are claiming.
The big problem is that the great contribution architects can make to the design of the built environment is value based. The best ones fight for quality against the profit-mongers and for the more ethical aspects of building, such as sustainability and community. This affects both the bottom line and the quality of life and is a laudible ambition that I cannot praise the best architects highly enough for. If there were some way this could be bottled up, marketed and sold to society, then I would be the first to grant it a state-controlled monopoly. Until then, I say let the architectural profession compete and live or die on what it holds dear as its knowledge.

BD subscription

It had to happen eventually: Building Design has gone subscription only.
Up until now, the weekly news rag BD has been free to all registered architects (see this post). However the ravages of the recession have taken their toll and the classified ads have all but dried up, meaning that BD has no option than to go subscription only if it wants to stay in business.

This means, of course, that there's one less reason to register with the ARB, which I was just considering doing and I doubt they'll take £29 off their £86 annual registration subscription. It does mean, however, that anyone can subscribe now - I tried subscribing once before with no luck, so it means the paper will be less exclusive to the closed circle of the architects only club. I hope they keep the web site open and free too, though.

It's a good paper with some good content, if you ignore the yawnsome Bill Mitchell. I usually like Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian, but he seems uncomfortable at BD. Ellis Woodman and Owen "Bloody Tragedy" Hatherley are always good value, though.

With the RIBA Journal just enjoying a tweak and the AR a much-needed major refit, it's all-change in the archiporn world. I'll be looking at these latter two in more detail after my holiday next week.

Wired UK

Wired UK 1.01 cover borrowed from Phil Gyford's full set on flickr here.

At a time when many, many magazines are dying, including the well established Architecture d'aujourd'hui, it seems a strange decision to launch a new one. And yet that is what Conde Nast are doing with WIRED UK. 12 years after the last attempt crashed and burned after only 23 issues, Wired UK will rise again, apart from its US parent once more.

Although it wasn't great, as someone who collected most of the above 23 issues at the time, I'm glad to see it back. While I'm sceptical, I wish the new venture well and hope it stays around longer this time and can deliver some better quality too.

AD cover quilt 1956-1975

Just one short of all AD covers from between 1956 and 1975 (doesn't mean I have all the magazines, of course!)


1955 is almost completely empty of covers at the moment.

Los correos

The post boxes at the main post office in Valencia.