Why are architects so cheap?

I was reading about the ongoing pay dispute between the government and junior doctors recently and learned that their wages had fallen in real terms by 29% since 2008. It made me wonder what the statistic was for architects.

Well, I found out. In 2008, an architect with five years’ experience was paid £30-35k. Today that figure is £40-45k. Sounds fine, right? Except that a 2008 salary is worth roughly £50-55k in real terms today. So, architects are earning roughly 80% of what they were 17 years ago. Where’s my money?

Architecture is not just the design of buildings — it’s the design of the experience of living in and around them. If we teach that to the next generation, the profession’s value will soar.

(image credit: https://greenmatworkshop.com/learn/architecture-crit)

The pay and fee problem

The profession, with the RIBA at the helm, has presided over an erosion of architects’ fees for decades. In 2008, fees for a one-off house were generally 10-12% of construction cost. Today it’s 7-9%. Commercial projects that once commanded 5-7% now see 3.5-5.5%.

Meanwhile, construction costs have risen faster than both fee percentages and salaries. Clients are paying more overall, but less of that is reaching the architect.

Oversupply and its consequences

In 2008, the Architects Registration Board (ARB) recorded about 31,800 architects on the UK Register. By 2023, that number had risen to just over 43,500 - a 37% increase in 15 years.

So, are there too many of us? I’ve supported architectural education wholeheartedly over the years, particularly apprenticeships, but I’m beginning to have a rethink. There’s a clear corollary between the number of architects and the decline in fees and salaries. At the end of the day, architects love to design buildings, and we’ll do almost anything to keep doing so - especially dropping our fees to keep the tills ringing.

Architecture travels easily across borders. Do our values travel with it, or are we complicit when we work in places where rights are not respected?

(Al Janoub Stadium, Qatar – image credit: https://www.dezeen.com/2023/09/04/masq-designs-light-up-zaha-hadid-architects-al-janoub-stadium/)

Who’s really designing our buildings?

A huge number of buildings in this country are not designed by architects. In house-building especially, developers rely on in-house teams - skilled, talented people, but usually not architects. I’ve worked in one myself, so I know.

Has the profession’s strategy been to increase our numbers so we can infiltrate these parts of the industry? If so, it hasn’t worked. The quality of our building stock hasn’t markedly improved, and design-and-build contractors or housebuilders are not suddenly full of architects.

If architects touch just 6% of UK housing, how can we claim to shape the nation’s future? Our potential lies in rethinking how people live - not just how they build.

(Image credit: https://constructionmanagement.co.uk/future-homes-standard-a-template-for-construction-from-2025/)

What are architects for?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you don’t need an architect to get a building built. So why should anyone hire one?

For my tuppence: a good architect solves problems you didn’t know you had. Give us a brief and we will challenge it. Let us understand what is driving your project and we’ll reshape the brief and the design to bring you the best possible outcome - which may well be not what you thought it was.

We create design solutions that are unexpected, holistic and innovative. And we can tell the story of a project in a way people connect with, whether that’s a client, a community, or a planning officer.

Where education falls short

Having recently been recruiting, I’ve found that many architects (and almost-architects fresh from postgraduate courses) aren’t equipped for this. Too often, schools teach building design, not architecture.

They treat the brief as sacrosanct, the room schedule as gospel. But building design can be learned on the job - or, frankly, found on Google or answered by ChatGPT. What architecture schools need to be teaching is problem-solving, graphical communication, storytelling, spatial character, and meaningful collaboration with other disciplines and stakeholders.

Making the word architect mean something again

Maybe it’s time to cut out the schools that don’t deliver this, reduce the size of the profession, and focus on quality not quantity. Let’s make the word “architect” mean something again.

Because the answer to our problems isn’t being cheaper. It’s being indispensable.