ANDREW NIMMO With the widespread adoption of partial services and the ever-increasing list of specialist sub-consultants architects are required to work with, many architects have expressed concern that the role of the architect is being trimmed year on year. Is this something that concerns you? What actually defines an architect?
JON CLEMENTS There’s a generational shift in the industry because the older-school architects were very attached to contract admin – but things have changed. We work in a practice where it’s not unusual to be novated and not to do contract admin, and we still deliver buildings effectively ... Project managers are happy to do the admin.
I would say that our value is in the strategic establishment of projects through design and utilizing designers as a vehicle for project interrogation. You can’t really take that away from the architect because of the way in which we are trained to look at design. I still believe in the idea that our design process is about exploring opportunities. The effective delivery of opportunities requires the architect to develop, detail and document the project through a collaborative
