The architecture profession needs to face up to the fact that it is dominated by those that went to private schools, according to Open City director Phineas Harper.
"[W]e *need* to start talking about the impact of private schools on architecture," the Open City director and former Architecture Foundation deputy editor wrote in a thread on Twitter.
Fewer than half of architects featured in Architecture Foundation book are from state schools
At least 90 per cent of people in the UK receive their education from state schools, which are free to attend and funded by the government.
But when Harper's former employer the Architecture Foundation analysed the 93 architecture practices featured in its 2016 book New Architects 3, it found that just 45 per cent of their founders had been to state schools, according to Harper. This is significantly lower than the 68 per cent of new students at Cambridge University last year who went to state schools, the Dezeen columnist pointed out.
"Succeeding in architecture practice is more elitist than the most elite university in the world," Harper said.

Harper made the comments as the UK government received intense criticism for using an algorithm to determine the grades of A-level students who have been unable to take their exams this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. A-level grades are used by universities to select new undergraduate students.
This led to many students receiving significantly lower grades than they wer...