I can’t wait to get stuck in to this. I recently read the word "From The Top" of the NZIA, Chief Executive Beverley McRae's editorial in September's Cross Section responding to RIBA's "Building Futures" Report. They are both well worth a read.
I was excited to see the RIBA Report extensively cited, 10 paragraphs all up, accounting for about half of the editorial. The Report (which you can download here in full, or in infographic summary as seen below) is the Royal British Institute’s commitment to critically reflect on its role, something I think all institutes are obliged to do to keep them vibrant, relevant and robust. The ideas presented by the Report are exciting for the Institute, and McRae picks them up usefully by directing this discussion to membership.
From the RIBA Building Futures Report.
I haven’t got all the way through the RIBA Report, or a ‘closer’ analysis of this editorial – which I will happily defend as being interesting to the discipline, let alone the Institute – but I hope to do so by next week and report back, because I am invested (in scholarship, and in teaching practice) in the idea that the institutions for architecture, whether they are educational, professional, student, or civic, both reproduce and restructure (change) themselves when they make statements like this, they also go a long way in constructing the identity, purpose, and representation of the profession, and discipline of architecture in a small community like New Zealand.
I am not any type of member of the NZIA at the moment, there is no practical reason, and so my comments come as an individual who shares some of their objectives in my day-to-day work, namely:
1. To promote excellence in architecture, and the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge relating to architecture. (an abridged version of the Object 2.1, NZIA Rules)
2. To advance the study and practice of architecture.(2.2, NZIA Rules)
3. To hold, manage, let, sell, exchange, mortgage, improve, alter, dispose of or otherwise deal with all or any part of the property of the Institute. (2.12, NZIA Rules) Just kidding, but isn’t that an AMAZING Objective? I mean, REALLY?
In light of these goals, I tried to reconcile McRae’s comments, appearing near the end of the editorial, which quip –admittedly in jest it seems “Architecture is what Architects do.” She continues, bizarrely “And I have found this very useful because I can then say: If an Architect hasn’t done it, then it can’t be Architecture.” I wont get into that right now, but I think it is an interesting statement if you consider how an Institute for architects relates to architecture. In a loose connection, Jonathan Hill made a colourful critique of the RIBA a decade ago in his book The Illegal Architect, attacking that exact position, which I am surprised to see reproduced so transparently, even if “flippantly”.
If the Institute is defined – as it should be – by its membership, McRae focuses in on some great questions, asking the Institute, and herself I suppose:
•What will we be engaged in, in one year/five years/ten years from now?
•What is likely to be the preferred occupational regulatory model in 10-15 years time?
• Who should our members be? [a cracker question!]
•Is the service delivery model for 2025 different?
•How do we portray our importance and role to the wider community so we are understood?
Challenging stuff, but there’s a particular style of language that keeps popping up in the editorial, which seems to reveal a lot about the Institute’s current strategy for its members.
For example, the Institute is loaded. In the last five years it’s pulled in over $3million per annum, brilliant stuff. McRae explains that “...the last ten years has been about growing the business in–” wait, the business? I have been the member of another Incorporated Society before, and I always thought they were quite different to a business, but maybe I’m mistaken. Societies have members; businesses have clients. Unless the usage is conversational, as in, I can happily go about my business in a bathroom stall, but I haven’t yet made $3Million from that, or a graph about it.
So who should the members be? Or more apparently, what should the members be like? Well McRae takes ‘collaboration’ as a key theme from the RIBA Report, and suggests that “…those of you working in the commercial sector will relate particularly well to [collaboration]. Practices may need to change their thinking from “sole practice” to being a part of an integrated expert team. This is not to suggest that small practices will disappear but it does emphasise the fact they need to stay current with technologies and processes and to cease playing the role of a subservient technician waiting for someone to tell them to do something.” "From The Top", September 2011 issue, Cross Section.
Take that small practices, it seems you’re uncollaborative, obsolete, subservient, and lacking initiative.
Really, I’m glad the Council is addressing these issues of the Institutes identity, and the role of membership is clearly a practical and useful way to go about it. Although redefining Membership could be seen as a merely administrative change (like in 2007, when it no longer wanted “Friends”), it can and should be played out as a rich democratic process that reflects the full constitution of the profession now and in the future. This process needs to be dialectical, rather then prescriptive: from the bottom, not just the top.