Harnessing the architect’s potential for expanded agency within contemporary design and development practices

Architects have changed how they think about their role in, and influence on, the built environment but this is not reflected in the policies regulating Australian architectural practice. Our project seeks to understand the changing values, worldviews and imperatives of the architectural profession and to compare them with the quantifiable measures of performance that are embedded in Australian processes for the registration of architects and national competency standards in architecture. Do existing performance measures adequately describe the contemporary architect? Does it remain possible to think of the architect as a single type? What does this mean for the regulation of the architectural profession?