The project challenges the codified divide between design and construction in order to propose a new approach to institutionalisation. The discussion is rooted in the British architectural profession. As architectural education is formally reassessed by the Architects Registration Board, it is fitting that our definition of an ‘architect’ and of architectural practice is also reviewed. The speculative analysis challenges the ‘over-intellectualisation’ of architecture, wherein this term refers to the purposeful distancing of architects from architecture’s built reality under the guise of professional superiority.
This ‘Architectural Future’ focuses on the value of tradespeople and craftsmanship to both the delivery and development of architectural projects. With a methodology shaped by a socio-political and historically grounded lens, this proposal reconsiders what the industry’s institutional bodies might look like were architecture’s linear definition challenged and its contingent reality embraced in favour of a more agile process.
The speculative proposition is presented as ‘The House of Builders’, an institution defined by its agenda and manifesto, which provides a framework through which the historical definitions of architects, authorship, collaboration, and craftsmanship can be examined.
As the formal building industry has developed, hierarchies between architects and tradespeople have become increasingly entrenched under the logic of linearity. Pedagogical frameworks such as the RIBA Plan of Work and Leon Battista Alberti’s separation of mind and hand, alongside policy and professional value systems, have contributed to the promotion of an outdated industrial logic. Consequently, the architect has become distanced from the act of building, weakening material knowledge, collaboration, and ultimately the quality of the built environment.
This project argues that through the introduction of authorship, codified practices, and the devaluation of craftsmanship, the abstraction of the architect from the building site and the wider construction industry is not a technical inevitability but a constructed condition detrimental to both the architect and the built industry.
The physical artefact acts as a membership pack for ‘The House of Builders’, in which a brick is placed in a presentation box beneath a printed and hand-bound manifesto and article, accompanied by a complementary branding card. In this way, the built reality (the brick) and its intellectualised reading directly interact within the same sphere.
This ‘Architectural Future’ focuses on the value of tradespeople and craftsmanship to both the delivery and development of architectural projects. With a methodology shaped by a socio-political and historically grounded lens, this proposal reconsiders what the industry’s institutional bodies might look like were architecture’s linear definition challenged and its contingent reality embraced in favour of a more agile process.
The speculative proposition is presented as ‘The House of Builders’, an institution defined by its agenda and manifesto, which provides a framework through which the historical definitions of architects, authorship, collaboration, and craftsmanship can be examined.
As the formal building industry has developed, hierarchies between architects and tradespeople have become increasingly entrenched under the logic of linearity. Pedagogical frameworks such as the RIBA Plan of Work and Leon Battista Alberti’s separation of mind and hand, alongside policy and professional value systems, have contributed to the promotion of an outdated industrial logic. Consequently, the architect has become distanced from the act of building, weakening material knowledge, collaboration, and ultimately the quality of the built environment.
This project argues that through the introduction of authorship, codified practices, and the devaluation of craftsmanship, the abstraction of the architect from the building site and the wider construction industry is not a technical inevitability but a constructed condition detrimental to both the architect and the built industry.
The physical artefact acts as a membership pack for ‘The House of Builders’, in which a brick is placed in a presentation box beneath a printed and hand-bound manifesto and article, accompanied by a complementary branding card. In this way, the built reality (the brick) and its intellectualised reading directly interact within the same sphere.