In a fortnight, after a year as president elect, I will become the new president of the RIBA. It is a job I never thought I would want to do – and for many good reasons. Not least because my father, an eminent modernist architect, always spoke of RIBA Presidents AD. The AD standing for Alcoholic and Divorced!
I am too old – 60 a fortnight ago – to tempt fate by commenting on the above. Especially as I have not even started in the role. But as I travel on the train to visit my 93-year-old mother – subject of a recent fall, hip injury and metal pin – I cannot help but reflect on how to feel, as well as to be alive, we all need to remain somehow involved and engaged in the world around us. In my mother’s case, this involves endless list writing, the handing out of jobs to her children and a general refusal to accept assistance, which means she lives the life of Miss Haversham (but in a mid-century modern masterpiece designed by her late husband).
In my case, not dissimilarity, I will spend the next two years balancing life between family, practice and RIBA – though then, as now, I expect they will all weld into one, hopefully not too tangled, web. Which of course is as it should be. For in life we expect to experience the worst of times and the best of times as they often simultaneously overlap. And that is part of the joy of the eternal pattern of life and death. A pattern which all architecture needs to accept, reflect and embrace. As I often state, good architecture can only become great architecture over time: as it proves it’s long-term value in successfully accommodating and then enhancing the essential Theatre of Everyday Life. Time is undoubtedly the only great judge of architecture.
So what of the now and the two years I have as president?
“The past 18 months have highlighted how vital it is to meet in person, engage informally and to recognise that civilisation relies on listening and learning”
There are many challenges we all need to face up to in life and for life read architecture. We are in the middle, perhaps at the end or, I fear, potentially still at the beginning of a pandemic that has impacted on us all globally. It has been a terribly difficult and tragic time for many. The Worst of Times perhaps. But it has also shown how resilient people are. Technology, despite my irritation at the complex workings, has shown that we can all work differently and perhaps we can now correct the life-work balance which had, for many of us, become dominated by screen time and excess communication. As the First World War admiral commented, we have no money so we now have to think. In our case we can begin to carve out the time to think and do. And this does not presage the death knell of the office or the city. For me, the past 18 months have highlighted how vital it is to meet in person, engage informally and to recognise that civilisation relies on listening and learning, as well as declaring. To have time to think. Which is why I still steer clear of the angry arena of Twitter.
As a society and again as a profession, we have to face up to the carbon challenge. Whether you think we’re going too slowly or too fast – and there are different reasonable views – there can be no doubt that embodied and operational carbon are the defining measures of how successfully we refurbish, rebuild and replenish the world we inhabit. My personal view is that we need to act at speed, regardless of precise measures of time. l believe as a profession and a society we work better and for the collective good when galvanised by a challenge. The challenge of radically reducing the embodied and operational carbon generated by all forms of construction and buildings in use is vast. And by it’s very scale it offers hope. Working collaboratively in the property and construction industry we really can make a hugely beneficial difference in the race to zero. As the husband and wife team of Charles and Ray Eames commented, “Without problems there is no design”. So, to go one step further, the greater the scale and complexity of the problem, the greater the likelihood it calls into being transformative by Innovation.
Equity is the third great challenge of the moment, and as with Covid and carbon, it will be a long-term project. Regardless of individual and party politics, there can be no doubt we need to help create a democracy that is both tolerant and accessible to all. As a profession, this involves architects thinking about what we do, for who, how it is funded and how we engage with the many people engaged in the life of a project. This is a particular challenge as traditionally we finish our relatively broad involvement in projects just as life takes over, but we know for certain that our buildings have to last for at least a hundred years, and then ideally be able to be dismantled and usefully recycled. I think the latter is difficult to anticipate a century away, so in my view we are best off assuming that what we build now must last perhaps for half a millennia or more. Which gives a new import to the age-old mantra: Long life, loose fit, low energy.
Which all makes it abundantly clear, if it wasn’t already, that our clients are not just those who commission us, but those who will be left to live with with our architecture long into the future. As architects we must engage with the past, to understand the present and protect the possibilities of the future.
Which of course is why I made the point at the beginning that all architecture is the backdrop to the theatre of everyday life and, in my world view, recognisig and responding to that is our great design challenge. Architecture cannot make an ill person well, but it can help improve the quality of life of all who interface with it, which is why those who pass by and never even enter our buildings are still our clients, addressed by the place and the face (facade) we make in the city.
Architecture also matters because it inevitably represents the best and worst of our cultural values and levels of civilisation. That is why Isis embarked upon a programme of destruction that has a long ignoble history (remember the desecration and devastation of the religious buildings in the Reformation). And why the intolerance of the Taliban is already destroying the social and physical structure of Kabul. We must never forget that intolerance and despotism is sadly always lurking in the dark shadows of all societies.
In light of all the above, a two-year sojourn as president of RIBA does not look too tricky. All I need to do is work with the council, board, staff and membership to help collaboratively create a new model of an Institute of Ideas, a generous open host to discourse. A physical and virtual place where ideas of how architecture can best serve society, now and into the future, are debated by members, the public and government in the House of Architecture @RIBA. That isn’t too tricky, once I set aside the twin risks of alcoholism and divorce!
