The long-term viability of the business of architecture is a real, ever-present concern for many in the profession.
Are the current downward pressures on fees and the upward drivers of costs, which make turning a profit such a challenge, here to stay?
The design and construction industry has always been subject to cyclical economic pressures, but the last few years have seen change accelerate and global crises multiply. It is becoming more difficult to anticipate and prepare for the usual growth and contraction cycle, and the peaks seem to be getting lower, the troughs deeper.
Brexit instability was a local overture. Instability went global with Covid-19, exacerbated by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and compounded by the recent vacillations of Trump’s trade and international policies. A seemingly permanent state of polycrisis. Meanwhile, economic and political circumstances have degraded the business environment with raised borrowing costs, fragile supply chains, regulatory change, unsettled client decision-making, and increased payroll and construction costs.
Ensuring the long-term sustainability of architectural practice means looking beyond current challenges to take a longer-term view. The Future Business of Architecture programme aims to provide that longer perspective, sharpened by the lenses of data analysis and quantitative and qualitative research.
Looking ahead ten years, many challenges can be seen, but so too can the extensive and varied opportunities for the profession. These opportunities are not just for business viability and growth but also for creating a better, sustainable built environment for all.
About the Future Business of Architecture
The objective of the programme as a research project is to:
‘Identify the likely scenarios in the future business of architecture in the next ten years’
The future form of architecture business is uncertain, both in the UK and overseas. Though future challenges and opportunities are discernible, they are often unclear.
Not only is the picture clouded and changeable, but there is also a danger of not doing justice to the enormity of the task. Particularly when there is such a range of factors driving business outcomes for the profession across a wide array of practice sizes, locations and sectors.
To sharpen the shared future focus, four questions guided the programme’s inception:
- How can practices prepare for and shape coming change?
- What is the financial future for architects and architecture?
- Where will future work come from?
- What will architectural practice look like in the future?
Taking the long-term view
To develop a future-focused outlook, the programme explores influences likely to shape the business of architecture over the next decade. It looks at:
- the sustainability of current business models is increasingly questioned. With profitability under intense and long-lasting pressure, cost control and productivity will become ever more critical
- the economic context will shape how architectural businesses work and compete
- technological innovation is accelerating apace, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digitisation increasingly transforming the business of architecture
- how the profile of clients is changing - who will commission work, where, and for what purpose?
- the types of buildings people need and where they are needed will be affected by technological, societal, and demographic change - whether they are newbuilds or adaptive reuse
- the scope of architects’ services, how they are provided, and the skills and roles needed to offer them will also evolve and expand
- the climate emergency is becoming ever more urgent, while complacency spreads. The need for mitigation grows with every ton of carbon emitted. However, the less action taken now, the greater the future need for adaptation
- how rapidly changing futures means practices are likely to develop new areas of expertise and the composition of practice staff may change. How will practices attract and retain skilled professionals? What kinds of expertise will be in demand? How can practices remain competitive? At the same time, how will practices manage wage growth while ensuring architecture is a profession to aspire to, providing work that is respected and fairly compensated? How will the work of architects be more accurately valued?
Building on Strategic Foresight
The RIBA Horizons 2034 programme explored four global megatrends that are acutely relevant:
- The Environmental Challenge
- Economics of the Built Environment
- Population Change
- Technological Innovation
These themes are further explored to describe future scenarios and their likely effect on the business of architecture.
The Four Themes
Questions about the future of the business of architecture can be grouped helpfully into four themes
1: Future work types
Work that practices do is changing. Clients are demanding different services, and the sources and commissions are changing.
This theme explores:
- emerging and growing work types and sectors
- changes in work locations
- future consultancy services
- changes in demand across the RIBA Plan of Work stages, and
- the role of architects, post-Grenfell
2: Future-ready Practice Management
The success of future businesses will depend on their management.
This theme explores:
- changing organisational structures
- emerging ownership models
- the culture of adaptable, future-focused practice; and
- what good business practice may look like in the future
3: Technological innovation
Technology will change practice, but how, how deeply, and to whose benefit remains unclear.
This theme explores:
- the effect of AI and digital tools on practise
- how the profession might retain, grow, and enhance its place in the design process
- which elements of practice will remain uniquely human, which will continue to need human oversight, and which can be safely and profitably automated
- future routes to value-based fees for architectural services; and
- how the scope of architects’ services might profitably expand
4: Future Skills and Roles
As the work of practice changes, so too will practice composition.
This theme explores:
- the talent and expertise of a future-ready practice
- the skills needed for future projects
- the growth and emergence of some roles in practice, but the decline of others; and
- staff diversity
Together, these themes will be explored through four thematic White Papers, released between the end of July and early October 2025.
The programme limits
There is much to explore, but the programme has a limited scope. Its focus is the business of architecture. Although nothing happens in isolation, it is not about, for example, future design trends, changing standards, regulatory developments or future government policy.
There is a firm focus on the UK. But the global picture is also explored because of the shared opportunities and challenges of the profession, the importance of international work, and the flow of architectural talent between countries and continents.
The Context
Profit Under Pressure: a challenge for practices
The “Future Business of Architecture” is timely. Five years into one of the most challenging decades for the profession, the 2020s are proving rough.
Following Brexit, the profession faced the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, including lockdowns, furloughs, and site closures. As the pandemic eased, project delays, construction product shortages and rapid project-cost inflation quickly followed.
More recently, practices have contended with economic uncertainty, spiking inflation, raised interest rates, elevated project costs, regulatory changes, and ongoing project and planning delays. Clients have become increasingly hesitant as investment returns become less predictable.
While total fee revenue earned by RIBA charter practices has returned to pre-pandemic levels, many are working harder for those fees, delivering more for the same or less.
Meanwhile, practice overheads continue to rise, particularly for premises, IT, and insurance (including Professional Indemnity Insurance). Staff costs have risen as wages recovered some lost ground, post-pandemic, and employer National Insurance Contributions have increased.
The combined effect of downward pressure on fees and upward pressure on costs is making it increasingly difficult for practices to grow or even maintain, profits. This presents a long-term challenge to the profession: if profitability is low, does architecture remain an attractive business to be in?
Pay and Conditions: a challenge for people
But the challenge isn’t just for practices. It is for people too. The pay and conditions of architects are seen as falling behind other professions. Salaries too often fail to reflect architects’ level of education, skill, and hours worked, and the value the profession adds to the built environment.
If pay continues to lag other professions will those practising architecture turn elsewhere? And will those who might have chosen the profession be lost to it?
Indeed, RIBA’s recent Workplace Conditions and Wellbeing Report 2025 showed that significant numbers of young, early career-stage staff are not receiving the Real Living Wage (as defined by the Real Living Wage Foundation) and many of those working in practice rely on additional sources of income to meet their living costs. Overtime working, often without pay, is prevalent.
This is not only an issue for those currently in practice, but also for the future. With such pay and conditions for many, how can the profession retain those already in practice and attract the architects of the future?
Architectures’ ambition
Taking a longer-term view by comparing today’s practice with that of the post-war era, has architecture lost its confidence? A confidence that was shattered by the perceived failure of modernism and the welfare state, and the ushering in of an era of privatisation under Thatcher and Reagan. Where once the profession aimed to provide much-needed housing, transforming cities and improving lives across society, was its ambition forced to narrow? Has the aim of radically improving people’s lives, through the better design of the places they live, work, and meet been lost? Or is there an opportunity for architects to now redirect their creative problem-solving and technical skills to tackle today’s most pressing challenges?
Will architects reclaim their professional standing internationally by developing the right skills to assume leadership in the sustainability crisis? Working with other disciplines in the built environment to design and construct buildings, towns, and cities that will minimise carbon emissions, meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and adapt to climate breakdown.
Can they also play a significant role in reducing carbon, transforming energy production and its use, promoting health, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth? Can the profession be instrumental in creating a built environment that’s fit for our shared future?
Addressing the climate challenge in the built environment requires that governments take clear, consistent action to regulate and incentivise change. Whether it is stipulating sustainable features in new buildings, planning for renewable energy transition or requiring organisations to adopt Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks. And good design needs to be at the core.
With both policy and business drivers in place to effect change, could architects be better placed to reassert their ambition to improve lives and demonstrate their value to society?
The Success of UK Architecture
For all that, the profession has reason to be proud and hopeful. If the last few years have taught anything, it is that architects’ practices are resilient and adaptable, able to seek out new markets and adopt new working practices.
Over the last few years, RIBA Chartered Practices have succeeded in growing revenue each year. It now tops £4billion. To put that in perspective, the UK steel industry had a GVA of around £1.7 billion, and fishing had just over £1 billion in revenue.
UK architecture is a global success. Our 2024 Business Benchmarking report showed that for every £3 earned by RIBA Chartered Practices in the UK, £1 is earned overseas. London is a global hub for architecture, attracting talent and expertise from across the world and exporting architecture to all continents. In a country with a chronic trade deficit, UK architecture delivers an enviable trade surplus, year-on-year. UK design is in global demand.
And architecture continues to transform towns and cities. Take the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, which was a catalyst for the regeneration of the once-derelict Tyne quayside. Or the redevelopment of the neglected Kings Cross area in London, transformed from the shadiest part of London to a global exemplar of inclusive transport-orientated development. There are many other examples, and many are recognised through RIBA awards.
Make the Future a Better Place
RIBA is a global membership body created to gather and share knowledge about architecture through the Arts and Sciences.
Our Royal Charter, granted in 1834, sets a clear purpose: to advance architecture and knowledge of its practice, and to share that knowledge in the UK and internationally.
RIBA's purpose is, in part, to advance architecture by pooling insight, gathering and interpreting evidence, and sharing best practice and expertise.
This research-first approach is shared by the Future Business of Architecture programme. Through evidence and knowledge sharing, rather than speculation, it aims to sharpen the picture of what practice may look like in the coming years. These future scenarios are not predictions but are presented to help explore the future’s possibilities to spark thought, debate, and preparatory action.
The RIBA strategy is the modern expression of the Royal Charter. The Institute’s strategic purpose is to:
‘Make the future a better place’
By advancing architecture and the built environment for the benefit of society. RIBA does this by championing and celebrating excellence in design, fostering innovation, and promoting sustainability. RIBA also advocates for the highest standards of professionalism and ethical conduct.’
Understanding the future is a precondition for changing it. And if architecture is to shape the future, architects need viable, sustainable businesses through which it can be practised.
Developing a better understanding of the future business of architecture is needed if the Institute’s Strategic aim is to be realised.
The Research
The Future Business of Architecture programme is research-based, extrapolating future scenarios from existing trends and new research.
So, to provide the evidence needed to develop informed future scenarios, RIBA is undertaking a structured, mixed methodology research project. The project comprises five elements and these are:
1 Expert insights from an advisory panel
RIBA has convened an expert advisory panel, made up of a range of industry and academic leaders from the profession and beyond. It includes practice leaders from small, medium, and large size practices as well as academics, clients, planners, engineers and developers.
The panel guides the research process, shares expertise, and helps interpret findings.
2 Qualitative research through in-depth interviews
An independent qualitative research programme has conducted in-depth interviews with practice leaders and early-career architects, predominantly in the UK but also from overseas. These interviews provided an in-depth understanding of how practices and staff expect their businesses to change over the next decade.
3 Quantitative attitudinal survey
RIBA invited members to share their views on the business of architecture and these were analysed by practice size and location to provide a granular view of the member’s views on the Future Business of Architecture.
4 Trend analysis using longitudinal data
We hold historical data about the business of architecture. Example data sources include:
- Business Benchmarking
- Future Trends
- Fees Bureau/RIBA Employee and Earning survey
This is complemented by relevant publicly available data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Architects Registration Board (ARB). The analysis of this data uncovers trends in the business of architecture and projects them to provide future scenarios.
5 Analysis of the RIBA Horizons 2034 programme
The programme explored the most significant global mega-trends likely to shape the future of architecture and the built environment. The four themes covered were:
- the environmental challenge
- the economics of the built environment
- population change
- technological innovation
RIBA commissioned a review of the Horizons findings to make explicit their relevance to the future business of architecture. The analysis included scenarios that explored how these trends will influence who practices architecture, where, with what tools, and in what kinds of practices. The kinds of architecture that will be needed, by whom, and how it will be funded were also explored.
Engagement and dissemination
The core content of the Future Business of Architecture project is a series of white papers, which will be published online between July and October 2025, outlining the research and interpreting its findings. These are the springboard for a wider conversation with the profession and other experts in the field, which is being developed through a broader programme: a series of articles in RIBAJ, a CPD webinar series and an online global conference.
RIBAJ articles will engage architects to reflect on the findings, asking what they might represent for them and their work, while also presenting case studies of practices that are working in new ways.
Four RIBA Academy webinars will explore what it means to be future-ready as an individual and a practice. How might we connect global trends with the demand for expertise?
What are the right skills required today? The human and the digital. How can we apply AI to bid writing and marketing, for instance, while still optimising individuals’ potential as trusted experts and in client-facing roles? How can practices of all sizes start to embrace technologies that improve design and business efficiencies?
The finale of the programme will be an online global, interactive conference that will stream live on 8 October 2025. Time-zoned by region from Hong Kong and Asia to The Gulf, Europe and North America, each session will explore and discuss a Future Business of Architecture theme, starting with new work types and closing with technology.
The intention is that the research and the content surrounding it will ignite a wider discussion among architects in the UK and internationally about how practices can be designed to thrive in the decade to come, sparking creativity and interest around the topic of the business of architecture and its possibilities.
Read our white papers as they are announced.
Adrian Malleson, Head of Economic Research and Analysis, and Helen Castle, Director of Publishing and Learning Content at RIBA, are co-leading on the Future Business of Research programme. Adrian has recently also led on RIBA’s Artificial Intelligence Report 2025.
The Future Business of Architecture is a RIBA Horizons Programme, sponsored by Autodesk.
