"Working yourself to the point of exhaustion is no longer a badge of honour"
As Dezeen's working-conditions survey reveals widespread dissatisfaction with low pay and long hours among architects, Amanda Baillieu considers what has gone wrong in the profession.
Can architecture survive as a special and unique profession? Architects have asked this question many times, particularly when economic forces are against them.
High interest rates, rising construction costs, a drop in demand for new office space and increased regulations are all leading to reduced demand for new projects in many countries around the world. Throw in the threat from artificial intelligence, which hovers like a black cloud over all creative industries, and the picture looks even gloomier.
At a recent debate on the profession, architect Steve Sinclair, co-founder of the popular Negroni Talks, said: "Watching the future of architecture is like standing on a beach waving at a tsunami fast approaching." Many in the room agreed, but were divided about what survival looks like.
Architects are tricky, high-minded and often unwilling to learn new skills
By and large, respondents to Dezeen's survey about the working experience of people in architecture and design, published today, enjoy their job because they are working creatively. Having a purpose is key to workplace satisfaction, but what emerges in the survey responses is that creativity comes at a cost.
While architecture remains a popular profession – the number of young people who want to become architects continues to rise each year – low salaries and unpaid overtime is leading many to question their choice of career.
So what has gone wrong for the profession, and can it be fixed?
Architects are tricky: high-minded and often unwilling to learn new skills unless they are essentially architectural, they rail against governments for not giving them a bigger role in the re-ordering of society, criticise clients for undermining their creative integrity and resent their professional institutes for not doing more to help them.
Some even blame their education and training, which they argue is too concerned with theory, with barely any time spent on the technical aspects of building. In the UK it's a criticism that has particularly touched a nerve because of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry into the fire that claimed the lives of 72 people.
The findings pointed to the project architect's lack of technical expertise, saying its mistakes are symptomatic of a "widespread failure among the profession" to properly understand the nature of the materials they are using. This has re-opened the debate on architecture education, with many arguing that architects are not being sufficiently well-trained to take on the responsibilities of complex projects.
Unfortunately, the sense of joy that architecture can instil doesn't compute in money terms
Architects who trained in the 1980s and even earlier look back with nostalgia to the time when they learnt about mastic joints and proper ventilation and daylight – in other words, how a building is actually built. But architecture education, while long and cripplingly expensive, is not the real problem.
More urgent is the profession's failure to properly explain what it does and why it matters. Until then, clients will continue to conclude that, with obvious exceptions, architects aren't needed except to provide a "killer sketch" for the marketing team – a concept drawing that is sometimes produced before the practice has even been appointed – when they are unconstrained by practicalities, including cost.
Architecture services are expensive and their value elusive despite numerous attempts to prove otherwise. Mainly because it's an almost unanswerable question.
While many bold words have been written about the power of architecture to change lives – think pupils who behave better and achieve higher grades in schools that are well designed and patients whose recovery is speedier in hospitals that are light and airy with views onto a garden – these are mainly anecdotal. Unfortunately, the sense of joy that architecture can instil doesn't compute in money terms.
At the same time, the challenge of building is getting more complex, partly because the questions are no longer stylistic as they were a generation ago. Now, discussions about a new project might start with balancing the carbon emissions that would come from a new build versus the cost of refurbishment. And while architects would be asked for their view, it is engineers who can provide the answers.
Meanwhile, architects' fees remain frustratingly opaque because they operate in a competitive market environment. Widespread success, when it comes, is pegged almost entirely to redevelopment booms, such as those in the 1960s and 1980s. But when there are fewer jobs as there are now, practices are prepared to work for practically nothing to stay in business.
The culture of unpaid overtime is one that's long been accepted as just part of the job
It hardly needs saying that low-fee bids are a bad idea in the long run. They explain why architects' fees are low compared to other professionals such as lawyers, and why practices find it difficult to push fees up; if they do, clients will simply shop around until they find a practice willing to do the job cheaper.
But this issue also highlights another problem: few architects have any training in how to run a business, so many of them struggle when the economic environment changes.
I don't know if all these things can be fixed. In the meantime, architects may vote with their feet. Low fees result in low salaries and unpaid overtime, both of which emerge as key concerns in Dezeen's survey.
The culture of unpaid overtime is one that's long been accepted as just part of the job and it's how many practices stay in business. But there are signs that a younger workforce who consider mental health to be a key concern are starting to object.
Working yourself to the point of exhaustion is no longer a badge of honour as it once was; instead, staff expect to have control over how much work they do and won't be bought off with perks like yoga classes and daily fruit baskets. And many of them feel that their passion is being exploited.
Practices have always insisted on passion as an entry ticket to a job – all employers do this to an extent – but architecture also clings to the idea that work is the main source of fulfilment in life. Why else would architects work until they die?
This change in attitude explains why one in five respondents expect to leave the architecture and design industry and only 10 per cent said they would "definitely" recommend a career in the field to someone younger.
Here in the UK we have just witnessed the longest strike by NHS doctors in history. Nobody expected it to last so long, but the government had underestimated the bitterness felt over pay, working conditions and stress. Although many of them would like to, architects can't strike, but perhaps the lesson to be drawn is that everyone has their limits.
Amanda Baillieu is the former editor of UK architecture titles Building Design and RIBA Journal. She is founder of architecture platform Archiboo, which organises talks and networking events, and co-founder of the Developer Collective. She is co-author of How to be an Architect Developer, published by RIBA in 2023.
The illustration is by Marie Mohanna.
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