The Profession of Architecture – Roles, Responsibilities and Challenges of the future
Challenging Times for the Architect
Introduction
Recent years have been challenging for the whole country and particularly for the construction sector and the architectural profession. Challenging times do however, afford the opportunity for reflection and debate about what is provided and delivered by the architectural profession.
I will briefly discuss how factors such as climate change, technological developments and the economy have impacted the role of the Architect.
Discussion
The generally accepted role and work of an architect is to strive to satisfy the aspirations of a client for building projects employing design and aesthetic principles to meet all functional, financial and technical requirements; that
the client's brief and project goals and the site context are the starting point and inspiration towards architecture. The skill of an architect’s is to ensure that those ideas and objectives are maintained, or developed, as the project progresses through each stage.
The regulatory and legislative frameworks extend the challenge for the architect and for the profession.
Architects increasingly have a role to play in order to combat the changing climate caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Rapid and significant reductions in global carbon emissions are necessary to reduce climate change, a minimum of an 80% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. This is laid out in RIBA's Climate Change Policy that adopts the philosophy of Contraction and Convergence. This means reducing (contracting) emissions from industrialised nations and converging (joining) emissions from all nations to ...
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“The architect’s role and their intellectual responsibility is to fight to maintain their vision and little bits get chopped off all the time, but if they’re only little bits, it’s not too bad.’’
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
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Architectural engineers help plan how a building is constructed so that it will look and function the way it was designed. Their work includes preparing building design and construction documents, cost estimating and construction-related projects. Architectural engineers should be creative, inquisitive, analytical, and detail-oriented. They should be able to work as part of a team and be able to communicate well, both orally and in writing.