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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when are they going to vaccinate the kids?
I can tell you when they will “vaccinate” my children. Never.
When the roadmap was unveiled, I had no doubt that “something” would come up which would push back all the dates – the roadmap was never intended to be adhered to, it was just another carrot to dangle in front of the masses to ensure continued compliance. But it’s just another frog-boiling exercise – it’s happened time and time again over the past year, and will continue to do so until we put a stop to it. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…”, etc.When will people wake up to what’s really happening?!
the roadmap was as believable as 3 weeks to flatten the curve
Happy week 53 of 3 weeks to flatten the curve!
‘Fool me ten times plus …..’ ??????
Fill in the blank.
Precisely, RickH – I’m astonished at people’s apparent gullibility! I can only assume that people just can’t even contemplate the alternative narrative that the government may not be acting in our best interests, so it’s preferable to swallow the lies and trust that it’ll all be over soon….
When the roadmap was unveiled I predicted it would be the mass testing of children that would be used to block the lifting of lockdown. I still think they will use the false positives generated from this in synchrony with the claimed shortages of ‘vaccine’, and I believe it will lead to them ultimately not lifting lockdown at all because we’ll miss the summer and will be due to go back into flu season.
“The standard for testing and monitoring of vaccines is higher than it is for most other medicines, because they are one of the few medical treatments given to healthy people (mainly healthy children). This means that the level of acceptable risk is much lower than it might be for a cancer treatment, for example. It can take many years for a vaccine to pass through all the stages described below. In the case of the MenB vaccine, for example, it took 15 years from the first idea to the vaccine being licensed for use.”
https://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/vk/vaccine-development
Amazing we’ve compressed 15 years into 6 months!
Imagine how many lives would have been saved if they’d compressed the 15 years development of the MenB vaccine into 6 months ‘with no loss of safety’
Of course – the balance of risk for cancer treatments is entirely different! Doh!
“no one can have had any idea how effective the vaccination programme would be.”
The latest mythology strikes. But freedom doesn’t.
Well … who would have thought it, hand on cock?
I have yet to see any evidence the vaccine program, lockdown, masks and large scale testing have worked
See how the media (including LS) are weaselling away while perpetually normalising the idea of a ‘vaccine passport’? And the dumb public still don’t see it.
So they expect over 60s to be in restaurants and swimming pools come July while telling young healthy people they can’t?
La la land
More distraction nonsense but sort of o/t
Boris Johnson is going to be vaccinated in the same way he had Covid-19.
Boris Johnson’s Big Lie In, And Lying; Part One
Boris Johnson is going to be vaccinated in the same way he had Covid-19.
Boris Johnson’s Big Lie In, And Lying; Part Two
What ‘setback’?