The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
The Allford Hall Monaghan Morris co-founder and former RIBA vice-president of education hit out after learning of the latest governance shake-up at what he called ‘the sadly ever-less relevant’ institute.
Last week banker Murray Orr and Google AI principal designer Matt Jones were named as members of a new, nine-strong board of trustees, which will oversee the running of the RIBA. It will be chaired by lawyer and University of the Arts London vice-chancellor Nigel Carrington.
The other new appointments to the board include Jo Bacon, managing partner of Allies and Morrison and chair of the RIBA Awards Group, and Nicky Watson, director at JDDK Architects and current RIBA vice-president for education, as well as Royal Academy of Arts director of academic affairs MaryAnne Stevens.
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The appointments followed a change in the RIBA’s constitution aimed at ‘streamlining its governance structure’. The new board will assume fiduciary duties, meaning the 50-strong council will no longer deal with operational detail.
However, the switch was derided by Allford, who told the AJ: ‘It seems the lunatics (the council) have now left the asylum and a new motley crew has been invited in by the ringmasters (the executive) to run the empty shell.
It is rarely full of anyone related to architecture – though it is big on corporate events. And now even the staff have gone
‘The president is [missing], though it matters not, as she, or in this case he, makes no difference. The building is now completely empty, which also matters little as, sadly, it is rarely full of anyone related to architecture – though it is big on corporate events. Even the staff have gone.’
Saying ‘enough is enough’, Allford called on the profession to act.
He added: ‘First we storm the building, taking it back for architects and architecture. Then we get rid of the ringmaster and his new crew, while simultaneously shrinking the payroll back to what is needed to run bars, restaurants, debates, lectures, exhibitions of the best drawing collection in the world and the celebration of excellence in education and awards.
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‘Imagine 66 Portland Place as a fun palace for architects, and anyone who is interested in architecture: what it was, what it is and what it might become – with Architecture, with a capital A, as the engaging backdrop to the theatre of everyday life that we are all missing so badly.’
Allford was supported by former RIBA president and current Perkins & Will principal Jack Pringle. He said: ‘It has been one new low after another.
‘Mismanagement, leading to a financial crisis, selling off the family silver, closing the great Florence Hall Conran restaurant, where we could entertain clients or politicians so RIBA could build a staff canteen up the road, and bringing in an overarching trustee body where the chair does not have to be an architect. “Jack, it will never happen” [I was told].
‘Now, the coup de grace. We can’t even find an architect to head up the new trust body and we appoint a lawyer.’
He added: ’We are a learned institute of architects that educates and supports architects. We should be headed by one of us. Can anyone see the Law Society selecting an architect to head up their main trustee body?’
Pringle concluded: ‘Some serious architects need to get elected to council, execute a palace coup, have another SGM and straighten some things out.’
RIBA chief executive Alan Vallance had previously hailed this month’s appointment of trustees as a ‘historic moment’, which marked ‘the culmination of almost three years of detailed member consultation and development’.
Our new governance structure will enable us to be even more efficient, effective, and focused on better outcomes
He said: ‘Our new governance structure will enable us to be even more efficient, effective, and focused on better outcomes for our members.’
Another former RIBA president, George Ferguson, welcomed the creation of the board as ‘a good move with a bit of added Google whizzery’. He told the AJ: ’I’m sure there will be kick-back from some members, but RIBA Council has never been the right place to deal with financial matters. It should be the place to defend the RIBA’s spirit and purpose of raising standards in architecture and place-making.’
Ferguson, a former mayor of Bristol, went on: ‘I’m impressed with the choice of Carrington, who has had a great outward-looking track record at the University of the Arts. The president, in ordinary times, should be vice-chair and the principal link with council.
’Our wonderful drawings collection will have a great friend in MaryAnne Stevens. Murray Orr has an impressive financial CV and has, incidentally, been a generous benefactor to his old university of Bristol.’
He concluded: ‘It is vital that the new board maintains the RIBA on a sound footing and reaches out to architects, educators, students and clients. The RIBA should be outward-looking and at the heart of the debate about the making of good places and defending a fragile world.’
Details of the new board were released just days after the RIBA reported a ‘serious incident’ to the Charity Commission, involving its president, Alan Jones, who has temporarily stood down.
An inquiry launched on behalf of the institute is examining whether Jones abused his position as its president or used RIBA funds to further an alleged extramarital affair.
RIBA response
Kerr Robertson, RIBA honorary secretary
The RIBA has been transformed. After almost three years of groundwork, last week the RIBA Council appointed a new board of trustees - some of the most influential and experienced minds in business, law, architecture, digital transformation and culture.
The new structure has been designed to improve the influence of architects on their Institute - elected Council members will no longer have to deal with operational detail and focus instead on the real issues that matter to their profession.
We are in good financial health and set up to be more efficient and effective, and better placed to support our members now and in the future.
In response to Simon’s suggestions for our London HQ – there is no need to storm the building! When the lockdown is lifted, the doors will be open again and everyone is welcome to enjoy the vast range of cultural experiences on offer.’
Well said Simon, and timely,
It seems to me that Architects with influence, long ago left the shores of the RIBA, and it has become more and more bureaucratic since.
In fact the Royal Academy over the last few years seems to have had more to say about architecture than the RIBA and probably rightly so.
Why does any Institute like the RIBA need 300 people to run it ? …….. therein lies the first job, Simon.
As the world changes for the better around us all, and radically, now is the moment when we all need to change.
Cometh the hour cometh the man ……..
Robin Snell
I agree.
When one receives more communication from the RIBA regarding specialised car lease deals for architects than on the RIBA’s endeavours to further the public/client understanding of the value of our roles, something is wrong.
The RIBA, what can I say. I’ve been a member since 1985. Visited the HQ twice, from the Scottish Highlands. Felt totally ignored. Never received any correspondence from them other that the RIBAJ. Many years ago we tried to join an Information Library service. Got a phone call to say ‘we don’t deal with Scotland, you are too far away’. What does it do for its MEMBERS outwith London, From my experience, nothing at all. Clients do recognise RIBA after your name. that is the only benefit. Otherwise, for me, totally irrelevant. It needs a complete overhaul.
What I have felt for the last fifty years. If Simon were president of the RIBA I might even join it.
If the RIBA provided the same level of member support and member services as the RICS the profession may be in better shape and have an improved perception in the eyes of the public and the businesses who commission us. What Simon Allford suggests is long overdue (providing of course that any ‘stormers’ are at least 2 metres apart).
I agree with Simon. I rarely visit RIBA HQ as it is so disappointing. I do not feel as if it is anything to do with architects – in fact, it was full of radiographers when I visited once with a guest and I felt decidedly unwelcome. I couldn’t even get a coffee in the building which is supposed to house my own professional institute. It was embarrassing.
Now we have yet another raft of irrelevant bureaucratic wonks messing around with it, who are not even architects and I doubt have had anything to do with the sharp end of the profession, or construction. How can this possibly improve efficiency? While we’re on the topic, what do the increasingly irrelevant and grossly overstuffed Council actually do? What on earth do 300 staff find to do all day? What is the board actually for? Why did the RIBA need yet another massively expensive building when it’s already got a perfectly good one (oh, of course! The corporate events!)
The first communication I had from the RIBA about this crisis was a reminder of my duties under the professional code. I do not wish to be preached at during a very difficult time for businesses, when it is quite likely many members will be in a terrible financial mess.
Time to remember, RIBA, who pays for you and who you are supposed to support. You can make quite a statement by putting RIBA HQ aside for its members and guests, and events to promote architects and architecture. We must have a decent members’ only area, so we little guys from the provinces feel our membership fees are of some value, and that we are actually welcome.
In the coming recession I have far more urgent places to put my £436 membership fee.
While I agree with the indignation of someone who sees a layer of administrators separating the exponents from the decisions as unwelcome, I disagree with much of the detail.
Personally I have no interest or a bar or a restaurant away down in London, indeed I didn’t know that the RIBA had one. What is surprising is that I did not know this. By comparison what is obvious is that most architects in the UK wouldn’t care. Also, I don’t really care too much about a library of old pictures in London. Am I a philistine, or is it that we are missing the point as a profession if we are still loving the pictures?
What I have seen RIBA Council presiding over has been all that they should have been preventing, from Latham to the collapse of the promotion of professionalism, and onwards to more recent tragic events and the attitudes that a recent inquiry appears to expose. Architects are now in a sharp, critical spotlight. It is time for us to get our act in order. The RIBA needs to be competent. Its governance needs to be robust and straightforward. Yes RIBA Council should be a sounding board, but in truth they have always been just that. All that has happened is that the decision makers are out in the open.
We don’t need a restaurant and we don’t need a club in London. All the lessons being learned about remote working need to be embraced by the RIBA right now, in order that it can better serve its members. We need the RIBA to be with us, supporting us, where we are working.
Pretty good architectural bookshop; what’s the journal like these days?
I can remember it varying year-to-year from being very informative to (for a while) being truly dire.
Never tried to eat or drink there, and as a very occasional visitor from the sticks (usually to catch an exhibition) the size of the annual fee – and some of what it funded – became unsupportable.
AI Google, bankers, layers, what “historic moment” for the RIBA…
Reshaping the RIBA
As the current President of RIBA-USA and a Chartered Member of the RIBA (earned after the marathon of architecture school in the UK and passing Part III), it has been very distressing for me and hundreds of other British-educated architects to have our regional initiatives in education, exhibitions, public policy and research persistently sidelined and ignored, viewed it seems as more of an annoyance to be tolerated than worthwhile ideas to be embraced along with the work of members operating in other regions of the world. The RIBA should be as virtual, useful and pervasive as many of the tools we use today to communicate readily with each other – not just as a club geared toward the needs of those who happen to live close by in London. Our membership is global and the RIBA ought to be reflecting and supporting that reality.
Its always easy being a critic but I have to say that it has become increasingly frustrating to see our hard-earned Chartered Membership dues get spent on initiatives of dubious value to the profession, while the Institute appears content to stand idly by while the role, credibility and standing of its members in the eyes of the public and policy-makers, are persistently eroded and marginalized by a host of under qualified interlopers claiming to possess more relevant expertise – which, as we know, they mostly do not.
We know that the role of human habitat in the production of greenhouse gases, human health and wellbeing, and economic resilience is profound. So too is the role played by architects in the shaping of it; the engineering, production and precision assembly of the places and environments human beings inhabit for home, work, education, worship and play. After the necessarily long and multi-disciplined marathon of architectural education leading to RIBA Part III, it is beyond frustrating to see the RIBA, through its business and governance priorities, appear content to see society at large think that the role we play in the affairs of mankind is little more than an expensive, discretionary drafting service or as grey-clad extras in glorified fixer-upper DIY TV shows.
We are all facing a world that will likely be utterly transformed by the confluence of this latest pandemic and the fragile nature of global economies operating on vast mountains of complex debt and easily-broken supply chains of goods, services and materials of all kinds. On the other side of this pandemic (and there will be more like it waiting in the wings) it’s likely that some reset buttons will be pushed. Getting “back to normal” might not be one of them, implying as it does returning to the hyper-consumptive, just-in-time, profits-at-all-costs world that was brought to its knees by of all things, a virus. The role the RIBA should already be playing in advising elected representatives, and allied professions considering the kind of economy, way of living, type of commerce, global trade vs local production and so on, post pandemic, is without doubt a significant one. This role for the Institute, tapping into its membership base for expertise, isn’t just about upping the fees architects earn. It’s about the public duty of trust that every architect carries who passes RIBA Part III. If we remain a marginalized player entering a post pandemic world, how on earth are architects to properly and comprehensively discharge their public duties of trust and be properly compensated for the value they deliver? These duties pertain to human habitat and the places and environments that play such a profound role in the health and wellbeing of people and their ability to experience fulfilled, productive lives. These considerations, cascading out into scopes of work, continuing education, codes of professional conduct, advanced technology, accreditation and licensing etc., should be central to what the RIBA does. It should be among a small group of institutes that function as THE go-to professional bodies for advice and counsel on the remaking and re-shaping of society as we face massive challenges, many of-which, from pandemics, economic high rises built on decks of credit cards, and accelerating climate change, are of our species’ own making.
It’s very clear new leadership at the RIBA is long overdue and this includes leadership in governance too. Not every architect pursues a career designing buildings, core to our value, though, this most definitely is. Some, as I have, go into business, investment banking, manufacturing, engineering, public health, computational design, or other fields. But all of them, I’d venture to say, harbor a dedication to their original field – architecture – and are capable of delivering enduring value to the governance and business operations of the RIBA. There is a great deal more value to the RIBA in Its 40,000+ “Chartered Membership” than just annual revenues. It’s time to tap into this broad membership base of expertise and experience, and bring it’s value to bear on the mission, governance and operations of The RIBA
Reshaping the RIBA and its global role is, more than ever, a critical need. It has to be done by architects – not just for architects but for the public duty of care each of us carries. We cannot help to steer the ship if we are not on the bridge sharing the navigation of our species’ ways of living and the places we inhabit with other allied professionals and elected representatives.
It’s long past time for the RIBA to move the profession into a position where it is able to do more and to earn the trust of those we serve – not just the clients who pay us. The Institue should embody and reflect the wide variety of roles its Chartered Members play, and champion very directly the profound (and measurable) economic, social and ecological value they are able to deliver to society. Both the opportunity and the need exist right now to reshape the RIBA top to bottom so that the value of architects and the educational marathon each of us had to undergo can be delivered to society to the fullest extent possible.
The health and wellbeing of billions of lives depend on it.
Phil Allsopp, D.Arch, M.S.(public health), RIBA FRSA, CSBA
President, RIBA-USA, inc.
Chair, Phoenix and Southwestern USA Chapter
+1 480-276-7707
So-where do we start then? The RIBA is an increasingly nonsensical organisation which endlessly exhorts members to part with money but actually gives so little in return
Sadly the RIBA has lost its way. When staff employees are allowing to take part in voting for what should be included in the Membership offer, then something is fundamentally wrong. The RIBA keeps going through the motions of improving the Membership offer, but in doing so fails to identify what it should stop doing. The interaction of the RIBA with Schools of Architecture and Students as aspirant Architects is minimal beyond that of Validation Visits. It’s become a Super(brand)tanker that’s unresponsive to change. I was proud to become a member 30 years ago, serve on Council, Committees, etc, but now I tell myself ‘dont be rash, give it one more year to make the decision to leave’.
I agree that the institute has become moribund and increasingly removed from both the needs of its members and the inspirational days of its past.
The building should be consolidated as a place of excellence in architectural design and a members venue – NOT a corporate entertainments place. It should be alive as a members resource and a place to stay.
There are simply far too many staff and at this hour of need most are furloughed.
Our institute needs to be much more focused on its core values. Be an institute run chiefly by Architects for Architects,
The new normal might I hope give cause to reflect on the excesses of this institute. An organisation that frankly very few young architects would join if their practices did not pay the fees for them!
Where are the Helplines for advice?, providing members with financial advice and help at this harrowing time ?
The RIBA has truly lost its way …
300 staff? Please provide a list of their salaries and responsibilities. I thought about 100.
The way the RIBA treats its members when they visit its building is a metaphor for the way it treats its members in general.
The whole edifice needs to be ripped out and refurbished, foundation to parapets, moribund council, ineffective board, executive, president and all.
Hi Simon,
Your sentiments ring clear to many thousands of RIBA Architects across the Country and globe.
However, we are afraid of loosing what public recognition and public standing the RIBA as a brand still represents. Being an Architect and being in the RIBA have become intertwined to such an extent emotionally it is very hard to consider resigning and the institute knows this.
Now you’ve made these statements publicly you need to turns these words into actions.
Why not set up an online poll, and when the numbers of supporters are registered make a call for mass resignations at one time from the RIBA.
A personal email to all members and get their signatures.
There needs to be an online central point to organize or this will never get off the ground.
Architects need to run the RIBA full stop for it to have any real legitimacy, and who has control of the accounts controls the business
as we as business men and women are all very aware.
The RIBA Council has no right given the 18% or less who vote to give away the power and decision making no matter how difficult a Council can be to manage.
I hear respected voices such as George Fergusosn saying the current RIBA actions are a good step perhaps he can elaborate why? I haven’t felt consulted as a member about this?
Of the 300 RIBA staff how many are themselves Chartered Architects? Not many from my experience. How many of the RIBA Regional Directors are Architects? Again, you’re probably challenged to find one. When the RIBA is reticent to actively engage with Schools, Students, Members, the situation is fundamentally flawed. An Institutional inertia has developed which suits those that work there, but fails to get things done (Education Review anyone?). The constant pursuit of revenue raising initiatives does little to serve us as Architects, it just attempts to feed the beast, and ultimately dilutes the brand. How can we expect our Institute to serve our needs when it doesn’t possess empathy or share the route, aspirations, experience that collectively bonds us?
There are many constructive criticisms that can be made about the far-from-perfect RIBA. However, I would encourage anyone making these kinds of dramatic, militaristic threats to consider what end, specifically, they hope to achieve. In a time of global pandemic and looming recession, when people are frightened for their families’ futures, I question the humanity of anyone calling gleefully for RIBA job losses, as many of the commentators appear to be. In my experience, many RIBA staff members work extremely hard to do good work in the challenging context of never-ending (but necessary) transformation.
Architects have been sidelined. Architects have lost any day let alone control of the building process and the implications are dire. Small practices struggle to establish themselves.
The institute has lost its way but was it so great 20 years ago? Certainly the leaders of the profession don’t seem to be interested in taking part, but is that surprising? Collaboration and cooperation across the professions and climate emergency will be top of the agenda when things get back to normal and that can only have an impact with the profession united.
I wonder if ‘Nope’ is the missing president?
As a developer who lives outside London I have visited Portland Place on one occasion for a meeting and its a soulless place which seemed to have little going on within it and the vast space seemed staggeringly underused. There was little in the way of inspiring architecture to see, in the end me and my cohorts headed down the road for lunch to continue our meeting. I was underwhelmed to say the least.
I’ve spent 11 years getting to this point – having passed by Part 3 last year. Following that, I haven’t registered with ARB and not even considered RIBA membership. (Not claiming to be an architect before anyone questions that – not my title or anything.)
This is another clear, concise and obvious critique of RIBA, reflecting why it struggling and the profession spends most of it’s time attending ‘profession in crisis’ events.
It needs to be more than London-centric, even though London is where it’s primary base is and where many of the most influential members might be located (probably the international base for best architecture) and yet most of the interesting things within RIBA take place outside the capital.
The organisational structure cannot be defended. The council is slow and productive change is non-existent. It’s elected leader has no power while others work in the shadows.
Not sure how 300 people could be usefully working there, but it’s not their fault and NOBODY should be let go at this point at all. Wonder how many are furloughed despite many architects themselves fighting to keep working and keep building for society.
RIBA seemingly does nothing to influence government, nothing to help architects or help achieve good architecture. The code of conduct for RIBA and ARB is not as good and robust and other professionals and we remain entirely at the mercy of each other in a race to the bottom in fees / quality / design and becoming increasingly irrelevant in modern society.
This perhaps isn’t the optimal time to take down RIBA, but as far as I can see (as a young potential professional) its long overdue!
the RIBA are a useless royal throwback. as functional as the monarchy that supports them. What do they do now? why do they need an embassy as large as the whole of china?
when was the last time they had any kind of relevant or interesting lecture, exhibition or debate? and now they are giving low paid architects money away to the very wealthiest CEOs and lawyers? its unbeleivable. how about protecting the term architect (try searchign on linkedin) or how abotu stickign up for pay and workign conditions of architects (worse tehan anyone else in the construction industry). this institute is a joke which only serves itself. just leave, they literally do nothing for you
why has the RIBA been entirely absent in the climate change debate? Why have they said nothign abotu London’s air pollution killing people who live here? Why arent they issuing guidance about designing for social isolation? why have they encouraged buildings reliant on air conditioning systems that spread viruses for years? Where was the quality control to stop something like grenfell?
Is there anything they have done in the last decade or so that is actually relevant or useful?
Brilliantly put Simon!
Having spent 25 years actively trying to improve the RIBA and represent members views on Council I finally gave up and withdrew my fees and my support. It wasn’t that the RIBA covered up my complaint to the Charity Commission about systemic corruption that, no the final straw came after lobbying and campaigning to set up an International Conference which instead of delivering a global opportunity for the membership became a PR opportunity for large corporate practice. RIBA has been dead for a long time – it’s now time to bury it.
At the RIBA SGM 2nd Oct 2019, held to approve the changes to the byelaws which clear the way for a corporate take-over of our Institute, transforming it from a democratic, membership organisation, I spoke to oppose thistranformation, as did Tzena James. We argued that this would inevitably undermine democratic control and open the Institute to corporate takeover and in particular that the position of chair of the Board was not reserved for an architect, a situation unimaginable for any other UK professional organisation. We were told that as the changes had already been approved by Council (which had meekly voted for its own disempowerment) and that the SGM was effectively a rubber stamp.
A vote was taken and from memory there were only 4 votes against.
However, rumour has it that coaches were provided for the architect staff-members from Ben Derbyshire’s and John Assael’s offices to pack the meeting, which was held during normal working hours and would therefore be most inconvenient for the average RIBA member. however committed.
Is it any surprise that over 80% of architects question the relevance of the Institute to their professional lives? I fully support the protest that Simon Alford has launched.
Kate Macintosh
Simon Allford in on point. We should seize control of the useless, bureacratic RIBA run by irrelevant lawyers or a womanizer president. These people are an embarrassment to the standards and reputation of our profession, especially in the difficult times we are facing with the ongoing crisis. We are in need of a bold change. Let’s act now.
Looking at all these comments, there are some uncomfortable parallels between the ongoing evolution of the RIBA and George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’.
Indeed, or Joseph Heller’s Catch 22; ‘SNAFU’.
I am not sure that this thread requires yet another voice from the regions decrying the London-centric nature of our professional body including those who postulate for and against its current endeavours. However I share many of the frustrations of my colleagues from the ‘provinces’ who rightly question the value of a restaurant we are unlikely to visit or a drawings collection we cannot easily use. The real value of the RIBA must lie in its ability to represent its membership effectively and to give a voice to us in a system that marginalises our value and belittles our contribution. To my mind the RIBA is simply not political enough – it should be vocal in its objections to lawmakers and use more of its time and funds to lobby government at all levels for the benefit of its membership.
Simon Allford, I stand totally behind you. And I stand behind Jack Pringle.
After I passed my part 3 in 1979 ( in the Florence Hall), alongside busy practicing architecture in UK and EU, I became very involved in the work of the RIBA’s many committees, also chairing grassroots committees and member of the RIBA Council (1993-2016) committed to raise the status and profile of the Architectural Profession and promoting its value of serving the public’s interest through quality design.
I witnessed many transformations on RIBA Council, which is the elected Governing body by the RIBA Architects and the rightful trusties. Some ten years ago the trusteeship was transferred to the RIBA Board against the RIBA Constitution. Three years later, under the pressure of the RIBA members, the trusteeship was returned back to RIBA Council in 2015.
Presently the ‘RIBA operators’ have changed the RIBA Constitution in order to transfer the trusteeship to a totally new and irrelevant to the Architects, Board chaired by a lawyer .
But please, where were you all at the Special RIBA AGM on 2 October 2019 when the transfer of power to the RIBA Board was voted by the RIBA membership. The damage to the Architectural profession was done. What happened to the democracy for the British Architects.
The damage has been done and now it is going to be too difficult to undo and we’ll be governed by the Lawyers and the like. The decision making by the democratically elected body RIBA Council has been tampered. I think storming the Building would not help. You have the lawyers there.
Surely the vote at the Special RIBA AGM last October had such profound implications for the direction of the Institute that there should have been a postal vote of the membership, not just reliant on those who could get to the meeting on the day being a representative ‘selection’ of the membership?
Was the membership made aware of the significance of this vote?
Yes Robert, there was a postal vote for the RIBA members well advertised by the RIBA staff – where were you?
No longer a member of the RIBA for many a year; the escalating membership fee at a time when I’d been threatened with legal action by the ARB after being referred to as an architect in print was enough to disenchant me from paying my dues to either outfit.
While the RIBA is far from perfect, it is disappointing to see some negative comment against incredibly hard working volunteer members who rather than being keyboard warriors engage with and influence what matters.
Delighted to see Nicky Watson on the board, hopefully this shake up allows RIBA Council to deal with important matters in a more streamlined fashion.
‘First we storm the building, then take back the asylum’ Simon Alford 17.04.20 reported by the AJ.
…..and err then spend £20 million on it….