In September 2019, at the outset of my presidency, RIBA’s elected representatives, including students and international representatives, voted unanimously that we needed to take “the high road”. By this we meant ensuring greater competency and managing greater levels of risk and responsibility to proactively tackle the challenges facing society and the planet.
With the bicentenary of the RIBA in sight and a new strategy in development, this was a prime opportunity for detailed reflection and planning. Presidents, volunteers and staff come and go, and it is clear that the RIBA and our profession would benefit from a clearer trajectory.
A few months later RIBA Council agreed the formation of the President’s Fact-Finding Mission (PFFM) – an exploration of the challenges and opportunities our profession might face over the next 15 years and a series of long-term recommended goals to benefit society, users, and our clients.
The value a profession brings to society and the trust it engenders depends on expertise, skills and behaviours – the ‘Social Contract’. In order to ensure any profession remains essential and relevant, these relationships must be reviewed and renewed – and that’s what the PFFM explores.
The mission is a combined effort, drawing on the expertise of over 50 people to examine what kind of values, knowledge, skills, and competences future architects will need over the next decade and beyond. It ultimately gathers critical insights on how the profession can survive, thrive and evolve.
It also looks at the relationship between practice and academia and how – through collaboration – they can challenge and support one another to create an integrated education and professional development system.
Its themes are broadly based on the ‘Principles’ agreed by the Presidents of the professional institutes of the UK and Ireland in 2018:
- Public interest and value
- Education
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Research and knowledge
- Sustainable design
- Delivering value, productivity and quality
- Advocacy and positioning
- Practice, business and competency
Each theme has a champion, with further contributors invited to develop thematic insights. My sincerest thanks go to the eight champions: Yẹmí Aládérun, Wendy Charlton, Rob Hyde, Indy Johar, Sadie Morgan, Nigel Ostime, Maria Smith and James Soane for the time and expertise they have dedicated to our collective future. Thanks too, to the six contributors they each chose to support and explore each one of the themes.
It has become increasingly clear that the spaces and places where we live and work – and how we travel between them – has a significant impact upon the world. They affect the climate emergency, the bio-diversity crisis, our health, well-being and our sense of belonging and identity. Governments and major clients are also becoming increasingly aware of the interconnection between health and well-being and high-quality, inclusive and sustainable design.
Our world, countries, governments and societies within, need architects to step up and be at their best; to devise and deliver the most appropriate solutions to the problems we face.
Our world needs architects to show intellectual and practical leadership to creating a better built environment – that’s our ‘guiding star’ to 2034, when the RIBA becomes 200 years old. The resulting research – which will be published soon – will form part of each new strategic framework being developed by the institute to ensure that we arrive at 2034 well placed.
More from me soon…
Alan Jones, RIBA President
