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The Royal Institute of British Architects plans to regularly test architect’s competence as part of an overhaul of architectural education and continuing professional development in the UK.

Published in a document called The Way Ahead, RIBA’s Education and Professional Development Framework outlines “a new direction for architectural education and continuing professional development, with a greater emphasis on health and life safety, the climate emergency and professional ethics”.

A major change contained in the document is that architects will need to be tested on four “mandatory competences” every five years to retain the right to be RIBA accredited.

Architects will be tested on fire safety every five years

Under the new rules, architects will be tested on health and safety knowledge with a focus on fire safety as the first competence.

“In effect, all chartered architects will be re-accredited every five years in respect of mandatory competencies – with an initial focus on demonstrating a minimum level of health and safety knowledge, including fire safety,” explained RIBA.

“RIBA Council has approved the introduction of a mandatory level of health and safety knowledge, including fire Safety, for all chartered architects, to be tested every five years.”

The testing, which will have to be undertaken online on the institution’s RIBA Academy platform, will need to be passed for members to continue being chartered in 2022.

A further three competencies, which will focus on “climate literacy”, ethics and research, will be introduced at a later date.

Testing will “create public confidence in the capability of chartered architects”

According to RIBA president Alan Jones, the testing is being introduced to rebuild public confidence in the architecture profession following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, which killed 72 people.

“We need to emphasise the attainment and maintenance of competencies and professional behaviours that create public confidence in the capability of chartered architects to deliver buildings and spaces that perform to the standards, and higher, that clients, building users and society rely upon,” said Jones.

“We must step forward showing leadership, accepting responsibility and demonstrating competence when asked to deal with risk and liability and to prove our expertise.”

Described by RIBA as a “single standard covering pre and post-registration education and professional development”, the document also includes plans to add accreditations for specialist roles and to focus undergraduate education on technical skills.

“The RIBA Education and Professional Development Framework represents a once in a generation opportunity to take a holistic re-look at the way we support the arc of a professional career in architecture,” added Wendy Charlton, chair of RIBA’s practice and profession committee.

“Not particularly helpful for small practices”

RIBA’s plans to introduce mandatory testing was met with suspicion from architects on social media who suggested that the examinations could be a way for RIBA to make money and could make the industry less diverse.

“I am assuming that these exams would have to be paid for on top of RIBA fees on top of lost earning time for revision and sitting exams,” tweeted architect Stefanie Stead.

“Not particularly helpful for small practices. Which means fees will go up and clients go to cheaper non-architects.”

Architects also questioned whether the testing would make the industry less inclusive.

“In an industry that already contains so many barriers to entry, I’m not personally convinced that RIBA’s proposals for further exams and study are the way to encourage more people into the industry and encourage a diverse profession,”  tweeted Ben Channon, an architect at London-based studio Assael.

“It is also putting more hurdles in place for those that find it harder in the profession, due to systemic discrimination both in the education system and professionally. UK arch. already do twice as much CPD as US architects annually,” added Deborah Bentley. “What is the RIBA thinking?”

However, others refuted this claim including architect and former RIBA presidential candidate Sumita Singha.

“I can’t understand the issue with diversity and inclusion in checking for professional competency,” she replied. “If competency excluded women and BAME in the professions, then we wouldn’t see female and BAME doctors, surveyors, etc. If anything, many women and BAME tend to be overqualified.”

“Baffling ostrich-like response to testing”

RIBA’s proposals, including its plans for mandatory testing were defended by several other architects, including former RIBA president Ben Derbyshire, who leads London studio HTA Design,

“Baffling, ostrich-like response to testing architects,” said Derbyshire. “RIBA members are already required to comply with mandatory online CPD recording. Testing of a small, critical part of the curriculum adds no additional burden and reassures the public as to competence in the profession.”

“I find it extraordinary how many architects expect protection of function but not the competency checks that come with it,” added RCKa Architects co-founder Russell Curtis.

“It’s clear that much of the profession is both woefully inadequate and hugely self-entitled.”

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Earlier today, Lexus Design Awards announced their winner for the 2020 edition of their award program. The winning project, Open Source Communities by Kenya-based BellTower design, captured the jury’s hearts for being innovative, well-structured, extremely detailed, and having a widespread impact by providing low-income communities with clean water. The Open Source Communities project was one of 6 projects to make it to the finalist phase of the Lexus Design Awards, resonating the award’s theme of “Designing for a better tomorrow”. The Lexus Design Award’s unique format helps seek out such revolutionary ideas and enables them to grow and evolve into full-fledged designs that benefit humanity. The Awards program sees thousands of entries from multiple countries every year, out of which 6 promising projects enter the finalist-phase. The LDA appoints 4 world-class design mentors; Philippe Malouin, Bethan Gray, Joe Doucet, and Shohei Shigematsu who help guide and coach the participants, taking their ideas to the next stage, and Lexus even helps with funding of prototypes, spending up to 3 million yen. A panel of 4 elite judges; Jeanne Gang, John Maeda, Paola Antonelli, and Simon Humphries, chosen by Lexus then reviews the 6 finalist projects, selecting the Grand Prix winner for the year. This year, the Open Source Communities project won the Lexus Design Award for its ability to create an open-source public-utility template that could potentially help millions of households and neighborhoods harvest, purify, and store water. “By addressing the way that the project will come into being and be sustained economically, the designers broaden our thinking about what design is and could be. While the project is an apparatus to collect and store rainwater for safe drinking, it is also a financial game plan for empowering a community”, added LDA judge Jeanne Gang.

It says a lot when 40% of an entire country relies on water from ‘unimproved water sources’ like ponds, lakes, and rivers, and illegally constructed pipeways. A vast number of Kenyans suffer from a combination of problems like water shortage, diseases caused by consumption of unfiltered/unfit water, having to walk miles to get water on a daily basis, or alternatively having to pay high rates for local water distribution. Something as fundamental as access to clean water is difficult to come by and results in major economical and medical hardships, not to mention the vast chunk of your day going in fetching water.

This skewed distribution of something as simple as water comes from Kenya’s great wealth divide. “In Nairobi high-tech coexists with urban poverty. As a major UN center, Nairobi attracts a global elite”, say the team at BellTower, who designed the Open Source Communities project which was declared the Grand Prix winner of the Lexus Design Award 2020. Open Source Communities, which was one of six finalists selected to compete last January, creates a new format of community-building that relies on efficient allocation of resources that help the communities get access to basic necessities like water. The project creates a centralized water-reservoir – a structure that sits between hundreds of homes, providing water to every single one of them. The structure’s innovative format allows it to harvest and conserve water, while actively filtering it of dirt, microorganisms, and other impurities. During the monsoons, surplus water helps generate money for the communities too, allowing them to get an extra source of income while bridging the vast resource gap.

At the heart of the Open Source Communities is its water resource center – a sustainably built, community-owned structure that helps provide clean water to all residents. The center is made entirely from locally available materials like bamboo and recycled plastic composite bricks, and is entirely pre-fabricated, allowing for quick on-site assembly. The center’s iconic design comes from its split-roof which helps harvest water as well as effectively provide shade and ventilation. The slanting outer roof provides shade as well as helps harvest water, while a mechanically tilting inner roof effectively controls shade and ventilation inside the resource center. Both roofs can be fitted with solar panels too, giving them an additional benefit of being able to harvest clean energy. The water resource center is replenished for the most part of the year by Kenya’s monsoons. The monsoon season is split into two parts, supplying the country with 1000ml of rainfall per year. These resource centers collect the rain, passing it through filtration systems that make them safe for consumption and daily use. People living within the community get access to water whenever they need (using foot-operated taps that minimize contact), and any excess water can be sold at a profit, giving the community an extra source of income during the monsoons. The resource centers are owned by the communities too, in the form of a monthly payment that gives them full ownership of the facility in less than a year. The benefits of the water resource center go well beyond supplying communities with clean water and a source of income. They keep people healthier too, while allowing them to save money as well as time. At the end of the day, an empowered community leads to a stronger workforce, happier people, a healthier economy, and lower inequalities.

The Open Source Communities project was designed by Kenya-based BellTower, a group of five members with diverse talents and a common goal… to create a system that helps bridge the resource gap and uplift lives. The best part about the Open Source Communities is that it exists as a public-utility template. Its open-source nature gives it unlimited flexibility, allowing it to be modified to fit in practically any scenario… thus truly echoing the Lexus Design Award’s ethos of “Designing for a better tomorrow”.

Click Here to Learn More at Lexus Design Award

Lexus Design Award 2020 Grand-Prix Winner

BellTower from Kenya is the Grand Prix winner of the Lexus Design Award 2020. BellTower’s entry, entitled “Open Source Communities”, was selected for the coveted award from among 2,042 total submissions from 79 countries. Judging criteria for this 8th edition of the Award were based on the three key principles of the Lexus brand: Anticipate, Innovate and Captivate in the quest for a Better Tomorrow.

The winning design “Open Source Communities” addresses challenges often found in developing countries by using smart open-source planning to design affordable communities with sustainable clean water resources.

Accepting the award, John Brian Kamau said ” It was a great honor for us as BellTower, to be one of the 6 finalists and then win the Grand Prix of Lexus Design Award 2020. Our journey began with many challenges. However, we persevered to showcase our ambitious concept. Our experience has taught us invaluable lifelong lessons. All our future designs will be aligned with the key principles we learned as part of the Lexus family.”

Announcing the panel’s decision, program judge and Studio Gang Founding Principal Jeanne Gang said, “At different moments in time, design has celebrated bold aesthetics, extreme functionality, and even humor and wit. But today, with our world plagued by the enormous issues of climate change and social inequality, there is a design imperative for systemic design solutions. The Grand-Prix winner expands our definition of design to include systems of finance for community projects and engages the critical role clean drinking water plays in citizens’ability to thrive. By addressing the way that the project will come into being and be sustained economically, the designers broaden our thinking about what design is and could be. While the project is an apparatus to collect and store rainwater for safe drinking, it is also a financial game plan for empowering a community.”

The Lexus Design Award 2020 Finalists

Feltscape by Théophile Peju & Salvatore Cicero

Think of the Feltscape as an isolation chamber that imitates the feeling of being within a womb. Designed by UK-based Théophile Peju & Salvatore Cicero, the Feltscape is a ‘breathing cloud’ made of felt and recycled bio-plastic with an innovative robotic fabrication process. Equipped with sensors and kinetic mechanisms, the Feltscape can sense a user’s breathing patterns, allowing the isolation chamber’s smart membrane to react to its user’s breath. Creating a perfect atmosphere for reflection, meditation, and an escape from the immediate world, Feltscape provides a cocoon-like isolation experience that helps slowly and surely calm people down. Its organic design reflects inspiration from cocoons too!

Pursewit by Aqsa Ajmal

The Pursewit is uniquely positioned to help the visually impaired not just be independent, but also develop vocational skills that help them make a living. Designed by Pakistan-based designer, Aqsa Ajmal, after her friend lost her vision in an accident, the Pursewit makes sewing more accessible with a design that’s built around ease-of-use with an approach that’s immediately intuitive and with a relatively shallow learning curve. The design scales the form of the sewing machine down, making it less cumbersome while also being simpler and safer. Ajmal hopes that the Pursewit will go beyond just helping the visually impaired be more independent by sewing or fixing their clothes, by also allowing them to take on a skill set that helps them earn a daily wage and be financially independent too.

Biocraft by Sutherlin Santo

Biocraft attempts at transforming mundane objects into living ones that interact with the environment. Originally named Bio.Scales, the Biocraft is a revolutionary material that combines natural biopolymers with emerging technology to create a new material that possesses capabilities like being able to extract CO2 from the air, rid the ambient environment of pollutants, or even disseminate nutrients into the atmosphere. Created by Paul and Garrett Sutherlin Santo from Los Angeles, Biocraft hopes to eventually replace materials like thermoplastics, eventually creating regular products that don’t just exist to solve a problem, but rather serve a higher purpose by being ‘living entities’ that have a positive impact on human health and the environment.

Flash Pak by Yaokun Wu

Akin to having a fire-extinguisher mounted on the walls of buildings, Flash Pak by Yaokun Wu of China aims at providing flood-prone areas with instant access to life-jackets. Designed to be attached to lamp-poles in areas susceptible to flash floods, the FlashPak sits in its protective housing at regular times, but in the event of a flood, naturally rises to the surface thanks to the life-jacket’s innate buoyancy. Floods, now an unfortunately common by-product of climate change, displaces millions each year, resulting in thousands of deaths annually. Solutions like the Flash Pak can turn a lamp-post (or any regular post) into a potential life-saving zone, giving people instant access to life-saving jackets during times of need. New jackets can easily be placed back in their housing once the flood subsides, and the Flash Pak’s automatic deployment during a flash flood makes it an incredibly effective, life-changing solution.

L.I.C.K. by Irina Samoilova

A quirky example of biomimicry, the L.I.C.K. by Irina Samoilova from Russia is a portable body cleaner that takes inspiration from the way felines clean themselves. The L.I.C.K. is modeled on a cat’s tongue, with a soft cleaning surface with unique papillae that helps people who are unable to have a bath to clean themselves. Designed for people with no immediate access to water, or with injuries/bandages/casts that require being kept away from water, the L.I.C.K. provides a unique tactile experience that helps keep the body clean. Designed to work just the way a cat’s tongue does, the L.I.C.K. can simply be run across the body while its specially designed papillae and U-shaped cavities help lift dirt off the body (while feeling great to the touch too!)

Open Source Communities by BellTower

What if architecture, like software, could be open-sourced so that people can collectively develop something better together? The Open Source Communities, a Grand Prix finalist from Kenya-based BellTower, hopes to create universally available open-source home-design plans that can be used to design communities in developing and underdeveloped countries. These open-sourced homes can help provide a safe and secure haven for people in developing areas, while helping designers leverage the power of open-source planning to effectively allocate resources, allowing communities to even be sustainable, energy-efficient, and eco-friendly by design!

The Grand Prix trophy was designed by Hideki Yoshimoto.

Click Here to Learn More at Lexus Design Award

Alex Da Kid’s new album 000 CHANNEL BLACK is the first under his new moniker, _BY.ALEXANDER. His previous releases catered to pop and hip-hop audiences, while under this alias, he explores modern jazz. “TRUMPETS”—a standout single featuring recording artist 070 Shake—best showcases this new style for the producer and songwriter. Toe-tapping, funky and fierce, the track features a steady piano, crisp drums, synths and bass—and, fittingly, it’s being distributed by acclaimed label Blue Note Records.

Pritzker Prize-winning architect and high-tech architecture pioneer Richard Rogers has retired from Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, the practice he founded in 1977.

British-Italian architect Rogers, who is aged 87, has stepped down from the board of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. His name will be dropped from the practice within the next two years, per the studio’s founding constitution.

“Richard has been a huge inspiration to us all at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and to the architectural profession globally,” said practice co-founder and former Dezeen Awards judge Ivan Harbour.

“His humanity, integrity and generosity are reflected in the practice he founded, and which continues to be guided by his principles.”

A pioneer of the high-tech architecture movement, Rogers is one of the world’s most well-respected architects.

As well as being awarded the Pritzker Prize – architecture’s highest accolade – in 2007, over his career Rogers’ awards include the Praemium Architecture Laureate from the Japan Art Association, the Royal Gold Medal and the Stirling Prize – which his studio won twice.

Last year he finally added the American Institute of Architect’s Gold Medal to his collection.

He is perhaps best known for designing the Centre Pompidou in Paris, London’s Lloyd’s building, Millennium Dome and Heathrow Terminal Five. His two Stirling Prize-winning projects are Madrid’s Barajas Airport and a Maggie’s Centre in London.

Rogers made his name working in partnership with Italian architect Renzo Piano in the 1970s when the two relative unknowns won the competition to design the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which completed in 1977. He founded his practice – then known as Richard Rogers Partnership – that same year.

The Richard Rogers Partnership became Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007, when Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour’s names were added to the studio name.

“Richard’s resignation has been planned since 2007, as part of the comprehensive succession planning strategy established when the Richard Rogers Partnership became Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners,” explained the studio.

“The decision to rename the practice was influenced by the vital contributions of Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour, two of Richard’s colleagues who have been with the practice for over thirty years.”

Rogers, who turned 87 in July, holds the title of Baron Rogers of Riverside, alongside a knighthood and a lordship. He was an advisor of Labour prime minister Tony Blair.

When he wrote the practice constitution, Rogers insisted that as the highest-paid architect he could only earn eight times the lowest-paid staff member’s salary. Yearly profits are distributed according to a points-based system, with a portion donated to charity.

“We have a responsibility to society,” Rogers told Dezeen in an interview ahead of his Royal Acadamy retrospective.

“That gives us a role as architects not just to the client but also to the passer-by and society as a whole.”

The architect has publically mourned the UK’s loss of social housing projects in recent decades. In the 1960s Rogers designed a house for his parents that he once hoped would be “a standardised system to solve the whole of the British housing problem”.

Rogers 2017 lecture for Architects, not Architecture was aired as part of Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival. The architect confided that he entered the competition to design the Centre Pompidou “against my will”.

“It was absolutely against my will, but being a good democrat I accepted that I was voted out by Renzo Piano, my wife and the engineers,” he said. “And I did it.”

Main image belongs to Dezeen.

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Apparel adorned with a Saudi Arabian pattern traditionally reserved for older women

Abdulrahman Aldossry (aka NAN) founded clothing line Abroad with his childhood friend, Tony Fallatah. The two grew up in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, share what they call an “uncommon interest” in their home country and both fell in love with streetwear while studying in the USA, at a university in Pittsburgh. Abroad’s first collection, Taboo, incorporates an Arabic fabric known as Shalki—a style largely unknown to those without Arabic roots but to those who are familiar, one that’s associated with middle-aged and older women’s clothing. Aldossry supplants the floral fabric’s traditional use and presents it in a playful, contemporary manner.

“The specific elements we used for the Taboo collection were Shalki to emphasize our roots and streetwear basics like shorts and button-ups,” Aldossry tells CH of the marrying of two very different cultures. “Since this was our introduction collection, we wanted it to be simple with a clear representation. Future collections may be more focused on streetwear itself, but we would like to always have some element that represents us and our culture in each drop.”

The greens, pinks, yellows and off-whites in Abroad’s first collection are tied to Aldossry and his partner’s upbringings, their shared memories of representation as Arabic youth, and subtle subversion. “There is one very particular influence: Jay-Z and UGK’s ‘Big Pimpin,’” Aldossry continues. “As a kid, hearing an Arabic beat being sampled in an American rap song was fascinating. I won’t forget hearing that song and seeing that video. The cross-culture elements really stuck with me and I always wanted to do something like that. It’s been an aspiration of mine.”

Made in New York, the Taboo collection includes collared shirts, drawstring shorts and straight-leg trousers, all in flattering but not formal silhouettes. The brand’s exclusive Shalki pattern—available on green or white—adorns each piece, allowing for matching sets or mixing and matching.

“The word ‘Shalki’ is used for this specific fabric and pattern,” Aldossry explains to us. “The fabric is very light and always colorful, characterized by floral patterns. The fabric has a rich history and I think it simply represents what was fresh to older generations.”

Not only does Abroad attempt to reintroduce the pattern to younger generations but also to all genders. “I was talking to a friend about the idea for this collection in the early stages and they mentioned the word ‘taboo,’” he says. “English isn’t my first language so I had to look up the word because I wasn’t familiar. Looking into it, taboo felt like the right name for this collection because men wearing Shalki would be considered socially taboo. It’s unusual for men in the Arabian Peninsula to wear what’s considered feminine prints. We could have used Shemagh instead, which is more recognizable as a fabric worn by Arab men, but we wanted to use Shalki in a way that no one was using it because it’s beautiful and underutilized. We know that younger generations in those regions don’t see this fabric as something that’s fashionable. Ultimately, the goal was to release this line in America with cross-culture in mind, but we also want to break down the barrier of gender constructs.”

Images courtesy of Abroad