The RIBA has recently expressed concern over the fact that architects may not be featured on the government’s occupation shortage list: Those on this shortage list can have their salary threshold lowered from £35,000 to £28,000 to qualify for a visa (amongst other requirements). It seems that the RIBA fears that without the subsidy of the occupation shortage list, many architects simply do not make enough money.
This position sums up why the architectural profession is in such peril. The RIBA is a representation of those leading the profession so it should come as no surprise for the RIBA to express such a short-sighted position. Architects in general think tactically not strategically, and this is unfortunately why the profession will never thrive under such parameters.
Is architecture genuinely a ‘shortage occupation’?
The biggest complaint that most people in the profession regurgitate is how low architects are paid. This is indisputable but it seems that architects have developed an addiction to whinging about this fact rather than the will to vanquish it. It is reprehensible how our wages stagnated over the last 12 years whilst the cost of living has increased significantly and I want this to be remedied, not for it to remain a mantra I repeat ad infinitum.
The crux of the problem is rudimentary economics: supply and demand. There is an oversupply of architects in the market that outstrips any demand for them and their services, leaving developers and clients with an inexhaustible pick of architects to choose from. This is one of the main drivers for such low fees that translate to even lower salaries. A strategic governing and regulatory body of the architectural profession should recognise this and act accordingly. If the scarcity principle is applied to the profession, developers and clients’ demand would outstrip the supply of architects, leading automatically to higher fees which translate to better remuneration.
Instead, the architectural market is saturated, replete with people who don’t want to even be there in the first place - if they are honest with themselves to admit it. Having worked in so many practices, I have lost track of many colleagues who were just not interested in architectural design and craft. They have no passion nor any curiosity about the discipline. They simply couldn’t care less. Instead these people focus on workplace politics, and career progression becomes the goal in itself not the means to for their design input to hold gravitas. For people with a passion for the discipline, being promoted is an avenue for them to contribute more significantly to create inspiring spaces and places. For others, it is the title on the business card and the power trip, very much like American Psycho albeit with shabbier wardrobes.
The RIBA also starts wailing when fewer students apply to architectural programmes. Why are architecture schools churning out so many architecture graduates to begin with? The schools have their own agendas relating to revenue from tuition fees but are the interests of architecture school and those of the architectural profession in concord? From personal experience having taught, many students were simply either not enamoured of the discipline but were there because of the erroneous impression that being an architect came with money and prestige. Even so, many architecture graduates can find more satisfying platforms for them by working for contractors, developers, project management consultancies, insurance firms and myriad other disciplines so intimately connected with property and the built environment.
The fact is the profession oversupplies the market and resorts to fee cutting and underbidding to chase limited opportunities. Instead of redressing the problem, the profession masquerades it by tapping into a global pool of resource to recruit and keep overhead costs down. This is not at all an indictment of architecture companies vying for the best talent on a global scale but it is rather a critique of companies reducing this into a source of cheap labour. The profession does not question the fee spectrum but rather finds ingenious ways of keeping costs at bay. This practice of oversupply and addiction to cheap labour fuels this mess we find ourselves in with stagnating salaries and dwindling standards of living and yet we keep complaining about being unappreciated and underpaid. This is akin to the economic bubble created by cheap credit. The day of reckoning will come, and it will inflict immeasurable misery on us when it does. In fact, it already has. Several times. Our governing bodies like the RIBA refuse to do anything about it so what is their strategy? Are we as a profession waiting to be saved by someone like a benevolent client or a sympathetic developer or a local council with a heart of gold or the public having an epiphany about how great we are?
Any governing body of the architectural profession has to radically overhaul its remit. Architects need a two-pronged attack to benefit the profession: one that lobbies for legislation to protect the profession and another to navigate rather basic free market economics. Lobbying for architecture to be put on the occupation shortage list is acceding to an unfair status quo and wasting so much time and resource to maintain it, nay, exacerbate it even by not allowing the market to adjust salaries, artificially keeping them down.
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