The Role of Architects as Aesthetic Experts

Recently architects have observed a trend of Council planners forcing design changes for aesthetic reasons. To force a change to a design may have complex implications.

It may also affect the reputation of the designer unless they are able to locate a plaque on the building explaining just what elements were changed. That they may change a design implies that the Council officer has the ability to make judgements on the work of a professional designer, even though they are not themselves a design expert. It is well understood by architects and professional designers that assessment of design aesthetics is highly subjective and only an expert critic can make valid critism.

A design professional, especially an architect, is totally reliant for their income on their reputation of being able provide good design. Architects have spent years training and developing skills to be designers producing quality above the average person. Design is a skill like playing sport or music. Donald Schon in his detailed and definitive analysis of the design process of expert pratictioners calls it a skill of 'reflecting-in-action'. The more experieced or skilled a designer the more thoughts are 'tested' per 'design move' and the more design moves per minute and the better the solutions produced.

To gain entry to the degree of architecture requires an excellent academic performance, and the degree at any Australian University is gruelling, involving five years of such concentrated effort to gain the basic skills, that it results in a dropout rate of over 50%. Then there is the competition for a job. An apprenticeship is served for the kind of wage that an eighteen year old would not work for in an architectural practice where 12 hour days are not unusual as jobs go 'out'.

To then become an qualified architect, a log of relevant experience at a high level of responsibility for over two years must be completed, to then have the priveledge of sitting an exam before a panel, which many fail first time. Throughout their lives the architectural student will examine buildings obsessively and read books and become passionate about this thing they do, for if they do not the conditions of education, the hard repetitive boring work to again and again practice drawing things, the hours spent modelling and learning to use tools and to understand processes, and the low wages defeat them.

The quality that results manifests itself in a class of professional who an understanding of building material, structure, light, thermal and acoustic performance, regulation, environment complexity in form, spatial and functional resolution, and most of all the ability to produce innovative solutions to complex problems. And the top australian architects are world class.

If the intelligent student takes ten years to gain the basic level of architectural skill, how can the untrained person do that job? And now as never before we know so much more about the fragile envionment and our architects are trained to undertsand their impacts from their very first year at university, making them after ten years of knowledge aquistion environmental experts. With the new archiects act there is formal recognition of the work they do to keep up to speed with the results of research to make them experts relating to the built environment.

Also to imply to the public or a client that a designer’s work may not be of a good quality or that it may be bad design in any way could damage their relationship with the client and it may damage the architect’s ability to gain new jobs. Words relating to a person’s occupation that may damage the reputation of a business person or words that reflect on the competence of a professional can be defined as defamation under the Defamation Act of 1974. The Architects Act 2003 has disciplinary action for architects

The issue of subjective design assessment is historically proven to not defensible in the Land and Environment Court. If world standard design excellence by our architects is to be encouraged, subjective assessment should favour qualified designers.

A qualified designer as defined under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2000 is a fully qualified registered architect as defined under the Architects Act 2003. Therefore it is now soley the perogative of qualified Architects to make aesthetic judgements.

Just as Benjamin Disraeli's Sidonia in 'Coningsby' declared the Age of Ruins was past and the Age of Industry was here , the age of the amateur is past and the age of the expert is here. For the issues facing our society we need to use the full ability of all our experts and work together, for sustainability is about syntheis of the vast knowldege we now have of the world.