Standing up for ourselves

While rejecting ideas of a privileged position in nature for humanity, sustainability appeals to the humanitarian aspiration for a more equitable world.

Advocates use these environmental and social justifications for introducing constraints on development practice.

Meanwhile experts have lost professional self-confidence, and rely on interminable and inconclusive public consultation exercises. Environmentally sensitive designers are careful to avoid the charge of arrogance, believing that daring is reckless and that artistic expression is incompatible with industry.

Paul Hyett We are doing our best within the law as it exists in a market economy.

Miffa Salter Yes I'm talking informed paternalism

Miffa Salter If you employ the right methodology, a group of individuals can actually not only make sense of something that is technically quite difficult and quite boring but they can also make sense of the implications of that on their lives.

Phil Macnaghten It seems that the problem with paternalism is it assumes that we still trust professionals.

Paul Hyett I think (planning) wants overhauling, shredding up, and generally thrown out! We could start again.

Paul Hyett We are struggling as a community to get there.

Does environmentalism turn humanism on its head?

James Heartfield (chairman) (Following Miffa Salter) There is now so much on the table that we will move straight into the discussion. To start, there is one thing I don't want to miss out on in Paul's speech. We have had a clarification of how the responsibilities entailed in sustainability can be made operative for the RIBA. Let me put it to you that this is a retreat from the sustainability agenda, and that you are resisting the argument that sustainability should become a legal duty.

Paul Hyett Well a great problem with these sort of events is having another lecture when you get a question, so I'll be extremely brief. No, I do not think this is a retreat. We can only operate within this society in a way in which we will be allowed to operate.

I asked a bunch of students and they came to the RIBA Council. They said they wanted to be paid better, that students working in practice were not being paid well enough, and for a charter for employers placing an obligation on architectural firms to pay students a minimum of £13,000 a year. All worthy stuff, but we could not deliver it. If such an RIBA charter were challenged in a court it would be thrown out and I would be trying to explain why I had wasted a lot of energy and money.

I am pragmatic. I don't want to sound complaisant, but we are working hard, we are doing our best within the law as it exists in a market economy. There are people who think that we should be constantly operating in the most competitive environment possible, and that is what I think takes us off at the knees.

James Heartfield I'm very grateful for that. Miffa, you seem a lot more sceptical about the possibilities in consultation and Phil, could I put it that you are riding that scepticism. I mean the way you tell it people's distrust of authority is for the good.

Phil Macnaghten Well yes, I think Miffa and I actually share more than we differ. We are both quite sceptical of the formal procedures and aspirations, and from research experience both recognise real difficulties. I think that if there is a difference it might be a question of agency. We believe that theoretically participation is essentially a good thing and that is something that we should be encouraging, and that there are real opportunities when participation does occur.

Miffa Salter If you are going to make something a duty it must be able to be challenged in courts of law. I think the issue of sustainability is about negotiating change, so it makes commercial sense.

Paul Hyett Most of the people I deal with on a daily basis are involved in the private sector of the construction world, and are more than happy to engage in this debate if they can see some kind of commercial rationale. Either in the short term, which is best for them, in the medium term or in the long term. All we need to do is work out how we translate sustainability commercially rather than rely too much on any code of conduct. I couldn't agree more. If you want something to change you make them do it by showing them what a great idea it is.

Ravi Bali This is a question for Miffa. From what you are saying consultation is not something that most people seem to be interested in. Are you arguing for paternalism, the way the welfare state used to look after people? It supposedly did what was necessary to meet their needs without consulting and them. Or would you resist that kind of paternalism?

Kate Abley Modern cities are complicated and sophisticated networks of people, and very difficult for anyone to understand who has not made an aspect of them their study. So I would like to ask the panel why they think consulting non-expert, individual people is a useful thing to do?

Caspar Hewett I was a little it disappointed because this session is called "Standing up for ourselves". It seems that nobody wants to stand up for experts such as architects and engineers. This emphasis on consultation reveals a lack of vision and cowardice on the part experts. Should we not be inspiring the person in the street rather than consulting them?

Ian Abley The reason for holding this conference last autumn was Marco Goldschmied's suggestion that sustainability should be a duty for architects. There has been a conspicuous silence since that time, because, it seems from what Paul has said, that this is something that the RIBA can't pull off. My personal feeling is that the rest of society is going to have something to say about that, and not just the RIBA. The social duty of care exists in a legal realm that the RIBA does not control. By using a legally precise word Paul, has the RIBA moved off moral ground and into the vagaries of the law?

James Heartfield OK, time is very short, so I'm going to put you on the spot.

Miffa Salter I think that there are three questions that relate to my presentation.

The first interesting one was about the degree to which I am suggesting paternalism. Of course, my answer both as an individual and as a professional would be No! When I look at this in all honesty I think there is a degree to which I am advocating informed paternalism. The post war experience has been one in which paternalism was the predominant ethos, and to turn that on its head within a very short timeframe is perhaps unrealistic. To do so within a ten-year time frame, which is not a political time scale, does make sense. What you have got to do is interest people beyond outcomes, and that means getting them more interested in the actual decision making process, getting them more interested in monitoring, evaluation and the whole concept of accountability. Yes I'm talking informed paternalism, rightly or wrongly!

Then there is Kate's point on why do we consult people who can't individually understand what is going on? I think that here we go back to the methodology that you employ. If you employ the right methodology, a group of individuals can actually not only make sense of something that is technically quite difficult and quite boring but they can also make sense of the implications of that on their lives. It really depends on the methodology employed. My own experience of developing consultation methods for somewhere as complex as the Elephant & Castle suggests it comes down to the method.

On Caspar's point about standing up for experts, I couldn't agree more. I actually think that if you have invested the time, resources and the intellect in getting to wherever you are within your profession, if you have vision then stand up and be counted for it. I think public sector experts are particularly hiding behind consultation. The best kind of consultation or debate I have seen is when somebody says, "…I am the professional, you are the expert, it needs both of us to make this solution. I want to hear what your vision is, but my vision is this and I'm going to explain it to you".

Phil Macnaghten It seems that the problem with paternalism is it assumes that we still trust professionals. For many complex reasons deference is no longer the usual case. The problem with consulting is that it is very difficult to find people who represent a community or are the local expert. There is a problem in how we are developing different types of relationship, so what we are first calling for is reflexivity. We are experimenting and re-working things. There are going to be failures, there are going to be successes, but we need to start.

We need a better sense of where we are, at a time when the Internet is very important. There are new networks in which people are relating to each other. The local is identified less by where you happen to live but in terms of your use of the Internet. That is why the local is not always the issue.

On the role of design I don't know how to answer that, apart from saying that sustainability is not just about environment or technical things. It is about re-working a model of how we relate to each other. We should be thinking about the social process in which design takes place. For instance, for me, one of the biggest issues is land ownership affecting your relationship to the built environment, or dwelling. It seems that if you want to develop sustainability it is going to start from a sense of caring for your dwelling, from a sense of ownership.

James Heartfield Paul, I know that Ian's put in a lot of effort to get you here to answer his question.

Paul Hyett I think that a very important thing to remember is that only the people with power can deliver anything, and power is money and power is land. One has to be able to influence the use of that money and that land. In that respect, architects need to be very careful because we only deliver buildings under the authority of clients. There are a lot of people who influence our clients far more than we do, like estate agents. The list is endless, as you know, so we should not delude ourselves as to how much we can do.

How much can the RIBA take a leading role? Well I think that architects have one unique quality which is they can think spatially. They tend to be very optimistic, perhaps naïvely so, but they are creative people who think spatially. They cross the disciplines of construction, and so have a very useful skill. It does not make us the only players, but it does make us a particularly central player by thinking spatially, and teaching others to think spatially.

Planners are pretty hopeless at this. I am a planner, but planners haven't got the first clue. If you were to ask most schools of planning to plan a city, they would not know where to start. They can't think in terms of anything other than policy, and with every respect to our social scientist here, planning was taken over by social scientists and that is why it has gone down that path. I think it wants overhauling, shredding up, and generally thrown out! We could start again. That is why urban designers emerged. Planning is a complete waste of time. We should think hard about that one.

On Kate's complex city; I think cities are complex, though they are not an organism. I don't think we understand cities at all, but the important thing is that we have got to try and do our best. People who specialise in the study of cities will do better in the lead, but we have got to help everybody else join us in the debate.

What is sustainability? Brian Edwards has been doing valuable work. I don't want to be patronising to Brian, but he has been exploring what sustainability is. That is surely the way and we need to explore it. We have it on the agenda. When I was taught architecture, and I was learning to act as an architect, sustainability was not on the agenda. When I was first designing buildings, sustainability was not on the agenda. Richard Rogers stands up and talks about sustainability but his early buildings had nothing to do with sustainability. Should we condemn him forever for that? Or should we say, "…well fantastic, he's done a huge amount recently with the Urban Task Force, he is opening his eyes to it, and he is taking a lead in showing many others. Everybody else can join in and develop that debate and that is surely the way we must go.

The very, very last point; the conspicuous silence. Give us all a break! We are all in this together. There hasn't been a conspicuous silence. There has been ongoing work. There is a limit to what we can do. The RIBA is not a dictatorship. We do have to get press coverage. Unless we had anything new, then it isn't particularly interesting to the press. Silences do not necessarily mean that we are silent. It just indicates, perhaps, that there is not much reporting going on.

I am an optimist, or I wouldn't be an architect, and I think that this issue is coming to the table. We are making progress and we're beginning to understand it better. Lots of good people have entered the debate. We are struggling as a community to get there.

Ian Abley Well thank you. Thanks to Redland Roofing for the Guide to sustainable roofing systems in the delegate packs, to be collected outside. Particular thanks go to the sponsors Reglit Glazing and Hunter Douglas who made this conference possible by funding the exhibition in the foyer. Please make sure you have visited the exhibition and spoken to their representatives. Finally, thank you all very much.

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