It sounds like the start of a bad joke. An eco-activist, a Labour party hack and an EDI advocate walk into a bar. Actually, that was where I found myself last week – in a lounge bar in Kings Cross – after the official candidate hustings for the election for president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba). Full disclosure: I was the fourth candidate – a bog-standard academic who has had enough of the usual suspects seeming to get the presidential title passed down to an anointed successor. I want to shake things up a bit.
The problematic net-zero script is central to architecture today, and so is the culture of restraint that follows from it
The president of the Riba is something of a figurehead, but does advocate for fellow architects, and is seen, by the organisation at least, as the public face of the profession. Presidents of the Riba are almost always founders and directors of their own practices, with networks and influence of their own. I’ve always felt uneasy about the continuity-candidate schtick, so I decided that – as a mere plain-speaking individual – it was time to put up or shut up.
I am increasingly frustrated by what goes on under the aegis of architecture with a capital ‘A’ – fed up with virtue signalling that ignores the everyday concerns of ordinary practitioners; fed up with closed door discussions; fed up with the collapse of free-thinking liberal arts education and its replacement with environmental orthodoxies; and fed up with the over-regulatory burden placed on everyday practices. So I thought that I should introduce some common-sense arguments to try to make a difference. Good luck to my fellow candidates, of course, but I have been sniping from the sidelines long enough that I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring.
If the public are asked (which they never are) about their views on the architectural industry’s presidential race, their response would surely be a shrug of indifference. That seems to be reflective of the mismatch between how architects think that they are perceived and the fact that they are rarely perceived at all. Undoubtedly everyone has opinions about architecture, but very few people know what an architect actually does. Indeed, in a small YouGov survey carried out 14 years ago, 15 per cent of respondents didn’t know that architects designed buildings.
When it comes to the Riba presidency, turnout over the last decade or more has been notoriously low – at around 10 to 20 per cent of those eligible to vote. But the issues are hugely important and not just for architects. The problematic net-zero script is central to architecture today, and so is the culture of restraint that follows from it. These are all themes that infect political life more broadly.
In the 1960s, when the construction industry was regularly producing three times the number of houses that we are today, a small number of observers pointed out that actually they weren’t very good. Harold Wilson’s White Heat of Technology speech had fired up society to meet Stakhanovite targets, but with little concern for the quality of the product. When Ronan Point collapsed in 1968, the architectural profession was blamed for shoddy design and forcing people into damp and desolate high-rise living.
It took 30 years for the architectural profession to get over accusations of irresponsibility… and then Grenfell happened. Slowly emerging from their eyries, high-powered professionals and politicians seized on ‘sustainability’ as their confessional catharsis. Instead of being blamed for having ruined lives, architects could now promote themselves as saving lives through saving the planet.
What better way to atone for the sins of the past? As a result, the concerns of leading architectural commentators has evolved into an obsession with counting carbon and promoting safetyism to the detriment of almost everything else. Good luck to those practices that can sell their services on this basis, but it has unintended consequences.
Smaller practices are spending ever more time and money on performative tick-box bureaucracy at a time when employment costs are sky-rocketing and profit margins tanking. But more importantly, if we see our creative actions as inherently harmful and in need of restraint, we merely reinforce a sense of uncertainty and over-cautiousness across society.
Increasingly, we now find a number of creative professionals questioning the primary goal of an architect: building new things. The modern mantra is for degrowth. Pritzker Prize winning architects, Lacaton & Vassal say never demolish, simply reuse what we have. World-renowned architect Kengo Kuma says we should ‘build less’. This is nuts, but it is what most architectural students are taught, as climate activists seek to embed degrowth principles more deeply into the curriculum.
It has long been the case that if you mention the phrase ‘climate emergency’ you were a presidential shoo-in. It has become compelled speech in too many situations. My campaign seeks to see if the mood for diverse opinions has changed for the better.
Austin Williams is course leader in Architecture Part 3 at Kingston School of Art, London and candidate for the Presidency of the Riba 2026. VoteAustinRiba.org
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