David Nicol and Simon Pilling found that higher education in the architectural education is under pressure to change in order to cope with increasing student numbers in the face of diminishing resources, to meet the demands of an evolving construction industry and to prepare students more explicitly for their working lives and changes in society: in short, to definite a new professionalism. Over the last 10 years numerous reports and studies have described how changes in society and in the construction industry are impacting on architecture and the other construction professions. Not all architecture students go into mainstream architecture when they leave formal study: an increasing number are embarking on careers that only have a marginal connection with the construction industry.

The traditional client/architect/contractor relationship has changed radically. Clients are no longer content to rely on the architect as primary adviser. There has also been increasing scrutiny of the architectural profession by the general public and building users. Demographic developments such as the ageing population, new patterns of work and leisure, technological changes and society’s demand for a more sustainable environment are pushing the public to demand that architects develop a wider repertoire of design responses to the built environment. Lawson and Pilling (1996) sought to discover what relationship existed between the services that architects provide and those desired and valued by clients. “Architects don’t explain their services well…part of it is protectionism. In general architects are not good at putting over what they do, there is an inbuilt arrogance within the profession that makes them difficult to approach. They’ve (architects) got a vision, in their head which we can’t see, it might be a fantastic vision and they might be able to draw it down in time and have a contractor produce it, but it’s no good if we can’t see it.”

John Worthington sees the profession of architecture and its position in the construction and property industry has changed drastically over the last 20 years. This profession has grown out of a continuous tension between the combination of the ‘organizer’ and that of the ‘artist’. As early as 1788 the architect John Soane clearly captured this tendency: “The business of the architect is to make designs and estimates to direct the works and to measure and value the different parts; he is the intermediate agent between the employer, whose honor and interest he is to study, and the mechanic whose rights he is to define.”

Architects are being expected to provide both the product and a service. The more innovative architectural practices are reconsidering their role to provide a new ‘offer’ that addresses both the quality of the built object and the range of services that can be provided to support it. Davis and Meyer (1998) argue that the new professional offering will be a combination of product and service over time. The approach of recognising the project as the ‘client’, as distinct from the ‘building design’, is further reinforced when one recognises that the value of construction now increasingly resides in the building services and fit out, rather than the construction of the building shell. 

RIBA proposed strategic study of the profession (1992), set an agenda for the learning needs of individual practitioners, practices and the profession. The study proposed that in order to survive architects need to concern all three levels:

• Individuals: the option for core sets of skills based on abstract knowledge expressed through well-practised technologies that cannot be substituted.
• Practices: the option of specialising or providing multidisciplinary or generalist services.
• The Profession: recognising the balance between commercial demands and professional interests and encouraging:

• Continuous improvement to rebuild professional status.
• Specialists’ degree courses.
• Business management expertise to result in cheaper services through better practice management.
• Commitment to client and public objectives.

Ruth Morrow argues studying and teaching in architecture schools typically share similar backgrounds, social class, aspirations and political affiliations, whilst teaching staff are still predominantly one gender-male. Change is always inevitable, even in architectural education. But for change to be constructive it must respect existing contexts and accommodate some of the traditional approaches in architectural education. Frampton (1983) says, “No new architecture can emerge without a new kind of relation between designer and user, without new kinds of programs.”

Katerina Ruedi critics most architectural educators see community architecture as unglamorous. It is associated with a ‘do-gooding’ attitude, conservative design solutions and student paralysis in the face of seemingly overwhelming political issues. The question arises: why we hardly finishing our long years of studying architecture if in the final execution, or in field practice, we start everything new, ignoring all of our, maybe, useless curriculum we learned? Whatever drawn on the paper is no doubt different with what built on the site.