"RIBA upgrading Portland Place is an expensive solution to the wrong problem"
Rather than spending £20 million to refurbish its headquarters, RIBA should make its spaces freely available for others to host engaging architectural programmes, says Phineas Harper.
Barely a week goes by without hearing an architect complaining about the RIBA. Griping over the 184-year-old Royal Institute of British Architects has become the background noise of life in the profession ? the inevitable exasperated segue of every pub debate and predictable punchline of all industry jokes.
The frustrations of its detractors are understandable. RIBA enjoys an income of £21 million, employs over 300 staff, and owns combined assets worth north of a quarter of a billion quid.
RIBA should be an irrepressible force for positive change
It is in a completely different league to every other architecture charity in the country, able to deploy resources and take risks most organisations can only dream of. With these considerable advantages, many feel RIBA should be an irrepressible force for positive change, and it's the gap between that vast potential and the sometimes lacklustre reality which seeds rancour among its members. However, in a recent speech at 66 Portland Place marking 100 days of his tenure as the new RIBA president, Simon Allford, kingpin of AHMM for three decades and among the best-connected designers in London, outlined a plan to mend the rift between architects and their institute.
Declaring it "must change", Allford called for the RIBA to "become a...
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