The most popular articles on salaries and project opportunities tells us a lot about architects’ concerns while the popularity of articles on the Building Safety Act and decarbonising designs shows the changes you continue to grapple with
#1: How do architects’ salaries compare with other professionals?
Published 6 April 2023
We’re in a cost of living crisis with a huge amount of pressure on our incomes and action across sectors to push up wages. So it is not surprising that the best performing article of the 2023 across the whole site was focused on salaries. And not just architects’ salaries: it looked at how they compare to the pay of other professions. This piece of original data journalism by Brian Green addresses both our anxieties and our ambitions. And if we see architects salaries rising more slowly than those of other professions perhaps it is some consolation that another article in the RIBA Journal’s regular coverage on salaries shows that they had risen by 15%.
Examine how architects’ salaries match up to those of other workers
#2 Opportunities Hub: Contests worth the work
Rolling story
Despite salary increases there have been rounds of redundancies as major practices look closely at their pipeline of work. This ever-present concern drives readers to the RIBA Journal’s rolling page of opportunities, where competition and contests are digested into one neat package ready for spotting by those looking for anything from ideas competitions to masterplans to civic refurbishments and health buildings.
#3 Pull the carbon out from under your very sustainable building
Published: 14 February 2023
Articles on sustainability from biodiversity net gain to specifying lower carbon bricks and concrete show that architects aren’t just waiting for the high level announcements from COP and the government but are getting on and educating themselves so they can deal with it professionally. What is rarely tackled in architecture titles is the carbon that is sunk into foundations. With his characteristic elan structural engineer Steve Webb sketches out a lower impact way of designing your foundations on small scale buildings. This is a lesson in asking the fundamental questions of our structures as much as an illustration of foundations themselves.
#4 Education reform: Is this the end of Parts 1, 2 & 3?
Published: 8 February 2023
Thanks to the dual nature of traditional architectural education – switching between universities and practices – everyone in the profession has a stake in the education of future architects. And there are some seismic changes ahead including opening up masters to a wider range of students who have not necessarily already got an undergraduate architecture degree under their belt, and checking learning outcomes at the point of registration. So many readers have come to this article to understand the plans.
Get to grips with planned changes to architectural education
#5 Feilden Fowles on working a nine-day fortnight
Published: 7th February 2023
A successful design-led studio experimenting with a very attractive way of working – what is not to like? Like many RIBA Journal articles this gives a chance to learn from peers with practice director Edmund Fowles outlining the detail of what works – turnover is up in the same period – and what doesn’t – the team is sometimes still working those days to meet deadlines.
Evergreen intelligence article 2022
– the most popular archive article that you kept coming back to again and again
Building Safety Act: full details published
April 2022 and rolling story
All architects need to know the details of the Building Safety Act, which puts them in a critical role and changes the processes around Higher Risk Buildings. We have been helping you grapple with this. The RIBA Journal has been following the legislation since early consultations and this article encapsulates the big moves that the Act set out, while picking up on the details that were only latterly published in August 2023. It has simple links to the key documents and a basic action plan. It is part of suite of articles on this subject that include delving into navigating the central role of principal designer and talking directly to Dame Judith Hackitt who made many of the recommendations in her review of the Grenfell Tower fire.