A rather boring organisation that regulates the architectural profession has quietly and unobtrusively got on with its business for years… unnoticed, unloved and uncared for. Until recently, that is.
In the last few years, the Architects Registration Board (ARB), the body whose primary duty is to regulate the use of the word ‘Architect’, has been given a mandate from the Government to respond to the politically awkward fall-out from the Grenfell Tower tragedy. As a result, it has been given more money, more authority and more visibility than ever before. It is increasing its staffing and its budget, but more importantly it is increasing its backroom influence. With random authority handed to a sleepy organisation that has long considered itself to be second fiddle to the more public-facing Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), such power has quickly gone to its head.
The ARB is unapologetically interfering in university education and legitimising its interventionist actions on the basis that there has been an extensive ‘consultation’. The consultations, of course, have predominantly been engaged in by interest groups that have mobilised to control the parameters of the narrative in their favour. On the issue of dealing with sustainability, for instance, the consultation has resulted in a national policy that says ‘Environmental Sustainability’ must now be included at every level of an Architecture undergraduate, postgraduate and professional diploma education.
Architecture students must be taught, inter alia:
• The principles of climate science
• The importance of advocating for sustainable or regenerative design solutions
• The relationship between social sustainability, social justice and environmental sustainability
• How to design to preserve, integrate and enhance natural habitats which encourage biodiversity and support access to green infrastructure space for communities
• Appropriate renewable technologies
• The use of onsite renewable energy generation or further offsetting, to achieve decarbonisation
If you have not been taught these matters – and if you cannot demonstrate that you have learned these environmental rules – then you will be refused access to the Register of Architects. In other words, you will not be allowed to qualify as an architect. In effect, students will be compelled to repeat a mantra in order to pass. There may be ways of pretending to jump through these ARB hoops, but its environmental criteria will still be the frame of reference.
As a result, the concept of academic freedom, long held to be the essence of a university education, is nowhere to be seen. Students and staff are no longer allowed to make up their own minds on environmental matters… if they want to pass. Regardless of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill trundling its way through Parliament at the moment, the everyday reality in most architecture departments is that free expression and the freedom to disagree are no longer sacrosanct. Instead of critical enquiry, we have environmental advocacy as the only permissible answer.
In order to sweeten the pill, the ARB insists that “there is no assumption that this Guidance will be used as a curriculum in itself” but it understands “that some institutions will need to make changes to the structure and content of their qualifications. Those changes will need to be properly planned and resourced.”
To justify this brazen intrusion into each academy’s curriculum – into intellectual inquisitiveness, experimentation, ethical enquiry and critical engagement – the ARB confidently points out that there were 48 responses to the sustainability consultation. (There are over 42,000 architects in the UK.)
Institutional responses came from the following environmental lobby groups, already firmly embedded in the mainstream of architectural discourse:
• Architects Declare
• Architects Climate Action Network
• Sheffield School of Architecture Students for Climate Action
• Newcastle Students Climate Action Network
• Westminster University Climate Action Network
In the interests of full disclosure, there were 26 other responses from architects, including 12 academics (myself included). But it seems clear that a tiny minority of environmental activists have have imposed their views on architecture departments across the country.
For years a sleepy organisation, the ARB has become a monster and is revelling in its position as the gatekeeper of formal, acceptable debate on climate literacy and environmental sustainability. Of course, there may be scope to treat these topics ‘critically’ – in other words, to put another side to the debate – but with climate literacy induction and training courses in preparation in many universities – for staff and students alike – going against the climate shibboleths might be seen as going against the ethos of the university.
It was initially intended that this increased ARB mandate would merely relate to fire safety design (as one might have expected as a response to the Grenfell tragedy). But it has spiralled out of control. It is now yet another unelected regulatory organisation that thinks it has a mandate to interfere in the delivery of education at university level. A regulator checking whether a university is delivering a suitable education is one thing; mandating what must be taught – what the content and the permissible approach to content must be – is quite another.
Austin Williams is the director of the Future Cities Project and author of a number of books on the environment and on China. His latest book is China’s Urban Revolution.
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Well wasn’t Israel intended as a homeland for Jews and as such it is “racist” – but what’s wrong with that? Many countries evolved containing mainly one “race” or “ethnic group” – the Jews didn’t have such a country. Where it gets tricky is the land used for this purpose already had people on it.
Is it still a European project now that a majority of Israelis are Sephardic (brown) Jews from the East? Is it more racist with 21% of Arab citizens than the surrounding Arab nations with zero Jews (and ambitions to exterminate every last Jews)? Were the Jews immigrating into the British Mandate after WW1 on the promise of a homeland somehow less alien than the 700,000 Arabs who came in between 1922-1938 from neighbouring states?
It’s still the only state I am aware of that defines itself in part as a homeland for a specific ethnic group.
Wasn’t Pakistan founded as a Muslim state for Indian ex-pats? It has certainly “encouraged” Hindus, Christians and other non-Muslims to seek a more suitable homeland.
Probably that was the intention, yes, though I don’t know that the right of return for ethnic Pakistanis (if that’s a thing) is written into their constitution in the same way that it is in Israel.
P is for Punjab, A is for Afghanistan, K is for Kashmir and S is for Sind. Balouchistan is in there too. Bangladesh was formerly East Pakistan. We should all know this.
Give it time, and youll see what the Ukrainian conflict is really all about…..
So racist 2 million Arabs live there.
Some 2 million more than the number of Jews living in Arab countries.
See my reply to Jon Garvey above
What Arab countries do is a separate question
I’m not taking sides here- in fact my natural inclination has always been pro Israel
For those who’ve not already seen it I do recommend this excellent presentation from Ivor Cummins which looks at the ‘movers and shakers’, the ones responsible for orchestrating the agendas and screwing up our societies.
“Who Runs the World, and How Do We Manage Them? The Full Story…”
My booked out live show in Salisbury – this I think may be my best talk ever…now viewable here on X!”
https://x.com/FatEmperor/status/1842883553912086588
Lol..absolutely hilarious… . Yes and who does he talk about… He talks about Rockafellas (Zionist Jews) and the BIS… The Bank of International Settlements.. THE biggest bank in the world who all the central banks deal with.. Founded in 1930 by you know who…. Jewish bankers.
Thanks for that Mogs…
“the ones responsible for orchestrating the agendas and screwing up our societies.”……. Absolutely bang on..
You’ve got this one right Mogs
After all, who doesn’t know that the world is full of Jewish bankers..
It’s alright love, you can acknowledge that the Jews own the world’s financial system without being “antisemitic”..
Chickens and Food Freedom
In this video clip Geoff Buys Cars continues his investigation of the great Chicken registration hoo-haa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTolsjsmtDQ
At first sight this might just be seen as a light-hearted poke at bureaucratic over-reach but if you watch/scroll through to the end he raises the issue as to whether there is an underlying agenda of restricting people’s ability to produce their own food and be resilient and independent?
Indeed, his enthusiasm for cheap old Volvo’s has demonstrated that Cheap old Volvo’s = independence and resilience compared to the modern trend with EV’s of control, restriction and dependence. Even if you are not a car enthusiast, I feel he has homed in an important aspect of modern life.
I don’t think there can be any doubt that registering chickens will lead to an order to cull them all when the next Fergusson gallicide model comes out.
Precisely. The next manufactured pandemic will be bird flu, so they will come after all the chickens, then they will start one of Ferguson’s loved ‘contiguous culls’ of cattle, because they have been making noises for some time about bird flu being found in bovines. Heavens, we might even find ourselves encouraged to bang pots and pans to stop sparrows roosting in the trees, forcing them to die of exhaustion…
The NHS: where does all the money go?
It will be no different in other ministries, particularly no different, quite possibly worse, in defence.
‘Without a plan to fix the system you end up just announcing policies, doing media and waiting for something to happen.’
Kemi Badenoch
There are some very complicated plans to reform Whitehall.
No need.
Simply freeze recruitment for all the existing Departments.
Create shadow departments, each with their own, interoperable, IT system (sourced from Denmark) staffed from outside the public sector and gradually take over tasks and budgets.
Only that way can a new civil service culture of service be generated.
Bring in retired civil servants from Denmark (which has one of the best European civil services) to oversee the setting up of the new shadow departments.
If you want proof, simply fly to Copenhagen, go to the railway station and book a ticket on the civil service run railway.
You will be provided with a ticket by a charming lady speaking perfect English with a sense of humour, every time.
The Middle East is on the brink of all-out war – what happens next?
Errr…..deja vu all over again…….
The Middle East has been either on the brink or at war for my entire life.
‘Mr Netanyahu needs to consider the rationality of his opponent, an unstable theocratic regime which is famously big on martyrdom.’
Nope. Israel has been dealing with that kind of enemy from the beginning.
It knows what to do………
Let’s rephrase that
On a light-hearted note, Aunty Beeb has Dutch museum finds beer can artwork in bin.
Sad. All the good times we spent together summed up with just two beer cans. So, one brief meeting then? C’est la vie.
“as if left behind by construction workers”
That’s a disgraceful slur on construction workers