Everything is Architecture

It’s Not Just a Building

  • Stop paying your clients to work for them!

    There’s a poll at the end of this post; I’d like to know how many of you within the Architecture industry has worked free overtime.

    Everyone of my colleagues, and I am guilty of this also, has stayed late in an attempt to manage their work load – without being paid (even a standard rate let alone overtime rate). RIBA and the ARB must do more to prevent this from happening. They’re all too happy to provide guidance to chartered members & companies about what they should be paying staff; whilst doing nothing about preventing the price gouging we get from others calling themselves ‘Architectural Designers’. As a result Architects and practices up and down the country are forced to lower their fees to win work. This creates an imbalance between what is demanded a practice pay in salaries against the fees won/year. The ones left bridging this imbalance are the Architects, and Arch. Assistants (shout out to all the incredibly hard working Part 1s and Part 2s who earn less than the Project Architects but stay just as late); And the way the gap is bridged is late nights, with no benefits. Where is our professional body?!

    The Maths:

    First lets look at RIBA’s median ‘Salaries for practices with fewer than 20 staff’:

    Director: £50,000 = £27.78/hr*

    Architect 5+ Years: £44,982 = £24.99/hr

    Part 2: £33,995 = £18.89/hr

    Part 1: £25,012 = £13.90/hr

    *Hourly rates worked out assuming you work 37.5hours/week x 48 weeks out the year

    Note the Part 1 is only just meeting the Living Wage for London set at £13.85/hr. How anyone can live on that in London is beyond me. I don’t miss student meals.

    Next. Let’s take the third-third-third rule for translating this into a practice’s operational cost. It’s never been my preferred way of working out such a thing, but its good enough for this exercise. For those who don’t know; its expected your running costs break down as 1/3 for salaries, 1/3 for office expenses (inc. rent etc.), 1/3 profit.

    Therefore out OUTGOING rates for each of our staff looks like this (after rounding up for neatness):

    Director: £85/hr

    Architect 5+ Years: £75/hr

    Part 2: £33,995 = £60/hr

    Part 1: £25,012 = £42/hr

    Great, we’re ready to take on a project:

    A client approaches you to take a project from Conception to Building Control Approval (RIBA Work Stages 0-4). The residential project is a single storey rear extension, and a 2 storey side extension for a detached house (you’re starting to get an idea of the sector I work in). Without providing a full break down of fees let us assume you quote £10,000.00 for the works. If you’re in a comfortable position, you may be able to hold this line and not allow clients to negotiate the price down.

    How many hours does that afford you?

    Director: £85/hr (Say 10% of total work) = 12 Hours (Day and a half)

    Architect: £75/hr (Say 60% of total work) = 80 Hours (10 Days)

    Part 1: £42/hr (Say 30% of total work) = 71 Hours (9 Days)

    Now, if everything ran smoothly, and by that I mean:

    • The measured survey was easy to conduct and draw up.
    • The clients liked your initial designs and there were only a few minor tweaks before submitting to planning.
    • The planning officers didn’t decide to arbitrarily slap on a few random pre-commencement conditions so they could suck a few extra quid of planning fee. (or the validation officer didn’t kick it back to you because the red line was too thin, or too thick, or not red enough).
    • The structural engineer doesn’t try to change your design.
    • The building control officer doesn’t ask you for notes that already exist on the drawings.
    • There are no unexpected findings when the trial hole is dug that requires Time Team to get involved.

    …to name a few things. Then maybe you could deliver a project in 10 days – The Business of Architecture requires you to do so. But lets not call it Architecture please; it is better to call it ‘the facilitation of construction works’ – Where in 10 days would you find innovation? Alternate, sustainable building materials? Really explore the level of detail to create something truly beautiful?

    Side note: 10 days includes factoring in that the Architect will likely need to mentor the Part 1 as University never taught them AutoCAD or showed them how to conduct a measured survey.

    So when the project inevitably goes over that 10 day period (because we are Architects, and we want to create beautiful things) how do you think most practices handle it? Well, please answer the poll below. I don’t necessarily blame practice managers/ Directors/ CEOs… whatever you want to call yourselves. You who are in charge of sending out these fee proposals and winning the work. Like I said at the start of this, I think your hands are tied due to the cut-rate-competition and race to the bottom that the ARB and RIBA seem to want to turn a blind eye to. That being said, do profits take a hit? When a member of staff gives up their free time to continue working on a project in order to manage workload they are paying for the privilege to work.

    If you are not getting paid for overtime then understand this: Architects, you are paying £25.00/hour to work overtime; Part 2’s, you are paying £18.89/hour to work overtime; Part 1’s, £13.90/hour. If you are not getting paid for overtime, you are paying this money directly to the client whose project you’re working on. So when you work late tonight, think about whose pocket that time is lining. And if you’re a director reading this, ask yourself: how can you shift the culture in your practice?
    We can’t keep expecting young architects to subsidise the industry. Because that’s what they’re doing—paying to work.
    And that’s not just broken. It’s insulting.

    I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Aga Szedzianis who wrote in the AJ on 2 December 2024 (just to help this article be that little bit more bias) “According to the RIBA / The Fees Bureau Architects Employments & Earnings Survey of 2024, an architect aged 38 now earns around £48,500 a year. In 1999, the same mid-career architect would be earning today’s equivalent of £67,760 a year, an annual difference of around £19,000, creating an almost 40 per cent shortfall. This is not mere salary stagnation. This is a rapid salary decrease.”

    Something needs to change.

  • Why Don’t We Design Buildings Like That Anymore?

    This is one of the most common questions I’m asked as I walk through London with friends or family. You know which buildings they’re talking about without me giving you any examples. They point to 17-19th century buildings and ask: Why do we never see details like that anymore? Focusing on ornate Corinthian columns, cornices, and friezes that once told the story of a British Empire in full momentum—and now play host to a Wetherspoons

    I can’t argue with their line of questioning. Take a survey and ask which buildings your friends prefer: Royal Albert Hall or National Theatre; Westminster or the New GLA City Hall; V&A Museum or East V&A? Why is it that we seem drawn to complex forms, yet now design and build with clean lines and cold planes? Of course, this is a generalisation—there will be plenty of people who wholeheartedly disagree with this hypothesis. They’ll prefer the GLA to Westminster, and they are of course right in their own opinions. I’m not here to say which is ‘better’, if such a thing can even be answered; we could debate for hours about the merits of each in their own time, and discuss in volumes which of the contemporary age will stand the test of time. Instead, I’m more interested in the nostalgia people appear to have for historical design and their apparent want to bring it into the 21st century. The question presents itself as an accusation and could be re-imaged: Why aren’t you, as the Architect, designing buildings with that level of detail.

    There are a few reasons I can bring to mind: A funding issue, perhaps; a skill shortage, arguably; lost knowledge (i.e. masonry work), less convincing. I believe it’s possible to design buildings with all the filigree of the 18th century. It could theoretically be done within a reasonable budget, or at least one that could match the steel & glass frame boxes – this would be done by simply cladding the steel box with stone facades, and creating moulded casts of caryatids and carved frescos. I believe the real reason we no longer design public facing buildings with such ornament is that, in reality, the people do not want it. If we take the argument that ‘art imitates life’ we can establish a clearer reasoning to answer the question. The ‘historical’ Architecture exudes wealth by way of neoclassicalism, and does so ostentatiously, it is grandiose and leaves no questions with the viewer as to the owner’s authority and power. The building manifests a social presence, and here we can see the biggest change in the last 250-300 years – the social presence. In contemporary society, while wealth is still ostentatious, it is arguably far more subtle. Which of us has not embellished an Instagram post to exaggerate a lifestyle that is not a part of our day to day. Have you ever used a photo filter, available to you on any number of apps, to make yourself look younger? How common place today is plastic surgery? Just a small amount of Botox to smooth out the wrinkles? Then how far a leap must we go to reflect this in our art? The art of contemporary architecture does the same thing, we do not want to see gutters and downpipes, junction details or dust traps in the form of alcoves. What we want is a smooth complexion, free of any visual hardship. Where Architects and Masons once spent their time detailing gargoyles, the effort now goes into detailing effortlessness.

    Reyner Banham echoed this idea in ‘Theory and Design in the First Machine Age’ – “The architect’s concern for materials and function was overtaken by a desire for clean, machinic perfection – an aesthetic of smoothness of effortless surfaces”. The modernist era, when this was first written is arguably the epicentre of the rejection to classical architecture and the beginning of what we see echoed globally today. The mundane. Over the years since the modernist boom our designs have lulled and whilst the effortless details might be appreciated to a trained eye (as pretentious as that sounds) they’re become boring to the lay-person. As Architect’s we must not forget that public buildings are for the public, not for our own egos; and the fact that I’m always asked the title question tells me the public are not impressed by 21st century Architecture the way they are about the past.

    Thomas Heatherwick wrote in his latest book Humanise “Boring is worse than nothing… Boring is a state of psychological deprivation // The brain begins to suffer when it’s deprived of sensory information”. So, the important message here is: If you’re wondering why your office building looks practically identical to every other in your local CBD; if you’re wondering where all the creativity is gone; don’t worry about it. Just ignore it, and get back to work like everyone else!