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.”

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