Awards and Advocacy
It’s a relief to be close to the other side of a long bout of flu, for those of you who have been similarly struck, I empathise. The Institute, of course, has kept rolling – events, meetings, workshops, advocacy, seminars – thanks to our dedicated chapter staff and members. Meanwhile Chapter Council has been working on supporting regional initiatives, and continues to provide an important conduit for our committees and National Council.
The awards season reached its Queensland zenith at City Hall on June 27th – the State Awards. Huge thank you and congratulations to all involved.
I’ve had the great pleasure of seeing the awards build through the lens of our unique regional program these past months. The diversity of projects, and the design preoccupations and skills of the entrants has been compelling. We’ve seen public buildings that create real social opportunity. Homes that are climate and nature positive. High performing urban infrastructure that is safe, welcoming, and beautiful. Workplaces designed for materials circularity built on shoestring budget. Design solutions that offer new pathways for
our housing crisis. I could go on. Queensland Architects are taking on the big challenges of our times while making uplifting places of importance and impact.
The awards program is pivotal to articulating what we hold as our ‘promise’ to the community, how we express our ‘social license’ – the tacit, or explicit, acceptance we receive from our stakeholders and the general public to do what we do.
The Australian Institute of Architects Code of Conduct reminds us that architecture is not only a technical profession — it’s a civic and ethical one. Yes we are a regulated profession, but our social license is also embedded in this Code of Conduct: we are expected to act as custodians of the built environment, with integrity, care, and social responsibility.
Governments are given their social license through electoral engagement. Businesses earn theirs by building consumer trust. Institutions build theirs through consistently delivering on the promise to educate or heal or safely manage our superannuation. Ours, I believe, is conferred through the quality of the designed buildings and places we create.
Let’s take housing. We need more homes, and fast. But communities need to trust what’s being built — that it will last, that it will support wellbeing, that it will foster real community. Good design is crucial to earning this trust.
Or Brisbane 2032 Games infrastructure. The government promise is ambitious and community expectations are sky-high around budgets, delivery timeframes, and city legacy. The risks to the Queensland government’s social license is significant. Architects have the unique skills critical to delivering on the community’s high expectations for legacy, for quality, for value for money, but we have to be properly empowered to deliver on public interest and legacy outcomes, not stuck in a subordinate role at the end of a long chain of contracts, without a direct relationship to an informed client. We urgently need to see a central coordinating and design governance role for our Office of the State Government Architect in this huge undertaking, particularly now projects are coming to market.
For now our advocacy continues to focus on explaining the importance of the right tools, processes and governance to support public interest design outcomes on the Brisbane 2032 Games and in addressing our housing crisis. Discussions with government representatives are ongoing, and local ABC radio and the Courier Mail have picked up some of our advocacy points through interviews and news items. These are small shoots in what we hope will be a growing public and government engagement with our profession.