The convergence of global forces is impacting the future of architectural practice. The capabilities of architects and the practising of architecture are being reshaped by long-term trends, including climate breakdown, technological innovation, the financialisaton of the built environment, population migration, and changing demographics.
Through our Horizons 2034 programme and the first three Future Business of Architecture white papers, we have explored how these forces might play out over the coming decade. This final white paper explores the skills and roles that will be needed within practice and how practices might evolve.
Architects are too often regarded as having a very narrow role. They are thought of solely as designers of buildings, rather than as professionals who shape our shared built environment and who work throughout the whole RIBA Plan of Work lifecycle – from project concept to construction, and beyond to post-occupancy evaluation. This wider role of architects positions them as leaders of the design and construction process, translating client needs into spaces that are functional, sustainable, safe, compliant, innovative, and high performing.
Limiting the architect’s role to that of visualiser or designer, whose work is confined to the early project stages, has made the profession – and the fees it can command – vulnerable to competition from building designers from outside the profession and to the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI).
The rapidly changing future is an opportunity for architectural practices.
In response to the global challenges ahead, architectural practices are well placed to expand their services far beyond routine building design. Over the next decade, they may increasingly offer high-value services in strategic spatial thinking and critical assessment, becoming the construction sector’s leaders in digital transformation, sustainability, and delivery of demonstrable client value.
Architects are also well placed to help meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly Goal 11, being leaders in the drive for sustainable towns and cities. Even more than now, architects in the UK will build their businesses on world-leading creativity. The relevance of the profession will grow if practices continue to uphold professional ethics and authoritatively navigate the complex and competing demands of clients, contractors, building-users, and wider society.
Following Grenfell, architects may increasingly assume a principal responsibility for ensuring the health and life-safety of those who use or are affected by the buildings they design.
Coming change
The nature of work is being redefined, just as it was by the Industrial Revolution. The recent World Economic Forum publication ‘The Future of Jobs Report 2025’ gives a global view of coming change, while in the UK, the government’s Assessment of priority skills to 2030 identifies the priority sectors in which the UK will need skills if it is to fulfil its potential. Both papers stress that changes in work will be ushered in by the forces of technological innovation (particularly AI and automation), climate breakdown, and societal change. Architecture sits at the crossroads of these forces, working to create a future-ready built environment. So, it is well placed to see demand for its services grow – but only if it develops the skills the future will require.
Architecture is uniquely well placed to respond to the coming change. To become an architect, an extensive, cross-discipline education and practical experience are needed. Adaptability is baked-in, and to remain an architect, continuous professional development (CPD) is required. The profession has the mechanisms in place to ensure that its collective skills and experience will continue to evolve so that it remains relevant, valued, and ready to lead future change.
RIBA laid the foundations for this evolution in 2021, by implementing , a new framework for education and professional development. This framework continues to be reviewed and developed, to better meet the future demands that will be placed upon the profession.
The current context – roles in RIBA Chartered Practices
No architecture practice is quite like another. Large international practices are very unlike small local ones. Nevertheless, taking an overview of practice composition gives an understanding of the kinds of roles to be found in practice.
Drawing on data from our Business Benchmarking survey, we can outline the composition of an ‘average’ practice. Perhaps surprisingly, only one in five of the people employed in practices work specifically as architects. Over a third (many of whom are registered architects) hold senior manager positions, whether as partners, directors, or sole principals (14%), salaried partners or directors (4%), or associates (16%).
The largest group of workers in practice comprises architectural assistants (Part 1 and Part 2), technologists, and apprentices. This reflects the reliance many practices have on the technical abilities that early-career professionals provide to the delivery of projects.
Around 13% of those in practice are either other construction professionals or fee-earning staff from disciplines outside of architecture. This reflects the need for practices to offer a comprehensive and integrated service, particularly as projects become more complex and multidisciplinary.
The future context
The remainder of this paper examines three major trends that will affect the skills and composition of practices in the future. These are technological innovation, the climate emergency, and future business. These trends will change not only how buildings are designed and built, but also how architecture is practised and the skills that practices will require.
In this rapidly changing context, practices will need to develop a range of skills in areas such as digital tools, sustainability strategies, and client engagement. More importantly, they will need to promote a culture of continuous learning and development, where self-assessment and reskilling become increasingly routine.
Our Horizons programme has explored how the future of architecture lies not only in creative design and innovation, but also in the profession leading across disciplines to adapt to the future and create meaningful change. This possible future comes with a high premium on skills. We turn now to what those skills might look like under each of the three trends identified.
Technological innovation
The effects of AI are likely to be significant, deeply affecting the workplace. If previous technological revolutions are anything to go by, new skills will be required while some existing ones will become redundant, new roles will emerge and others will be displaced. By looking only at what we do now, fears of mass job losses are easy to stoke. It is much harder to imagine the new roles that will be created. But in other periods of rapid technological innovation, these new roles always did come.
"Will that replace the person who does the door schedule … will it replace the architectural technician?"
Our AI Report 2025 found that 18% of survey respondents believed AI would lead to job losses within two years. These losses might come in two ways. First, as AI reduces the time needed to carry out existing architectural activities, fewer staff may be required. This includes both design activities (such as producing early-stage visualisations or writing specifications) and business tasks (such as writing proposals or conducting marketing activities). Second, AI may enable those outside the profession to produce building designs. In our AI survey, 47% agreed that ‘AI enables those without sufficient professional knowledge to design buildings’.
Role displacement is most likely to occur in the areas of practice work that require a lower level of professional architectural experience and expertise, making technologist and early-stage career roles most vulnerable.
However, new opportunities will also emerge. Some will be related to the operation and development of AI systems and tools, others will be more to deal with the risks and ethical implications of AI use within the profession.
Operating and developing AI systems and tools
Practices will need people who can critically assess which AI systems are worth adopting and then oversee the implementation of those that are. As with other technologies, choosing the right tools, managing licences, and ensuring effective deployment require an ongoing investment of time and resources.
AI-specific skills will continue to emerge, such as prompt crafting and critical output reviewing. Practices may allocate resources to customising generic models with practice- or sector-specific data, or they may even develop in-house neural networks.
Creating new AI-enabled workflows, adapting working processes to those workflows, and integrating multiple fast-evolving AI tools will be a challenge. People will need training. Change will need to be managed. Existing data may need to be reviewed and standardised to ensure it is machine readable, and training data will need to be corralled to allow the AI learning of a practice style. Existing skills in data management, manipulation, and visualisation, along with building information modelling (BIM) skills, will remain in demand for at least the medium term.
"I think the other big item, which I think I'll see in my lifetime … automation will affect construction a lot, as in physical automation, where buildings are made in factories … So not people on a site, assembling concrete and wood, but in a factory, like a car factory, assembling pieces that come to site, get put together, and you build in six, eight weeks, rather than two years."
AI will not develop in isolation. It will develop alongside other emerging technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), robotics, construction automation, the Internet of Things (IoT), digital twins, smart cities, sensor-enabled buildings, new materials, and innovations that narrow the gap between design and manufacturing. Practices will increasingly need to devote resources to researching, evaluating, and potentially implementing a whole raft of new and emerging technologies into practice workflows and services. Research will be at the core of future practice.
Even as these new skills and roles emerge, existing ones will remain vital. Practices will retain the legal and ethical responsibility for their output. Designs involving AI will likely become more complex and AI output will always need thorough review. The core skills of architects – design thinking, critical evaluation, systems thinking – will become more valuable, not less. A challenge may be how to impart these skills to early-stage career professionals, as much of the work that previously provided their training ground will become lost to AI.
Managing risk
But it’s not just about using the tools and assessing their output. AI use brings with it complex and often uncharted risks, including copyright, ethics, insurance, and legal liability.
"When embracing this helpful and exciting technology, do you ever think about what could go wrong? Do you consider what you could lose, not just what you might gain?"
Each practice will need to assess its appetite for risk. How much of its resources is it willing to allocate to risk management and mitigation.
Ownership of AI-generated content remains a legally ambiguous but critical issue. What ownership status will a practice have for the data it puts into and gets out of an AI model? Do designs created with the help of AI belong to the practice, the tech company, or the practice on whose training data the AI tool was trained? These issues, which currently are largely untested, will likely become acute.
Expertise in copyright and intellectual property law will become increasingly valuable. Legal literacy and the ability to navigate data protection, intellectual property, and contractual responsibility will be essential. Aligned to this, practices will need to develop and maintain fit-for-purpose processes, governance, and policy documents that reflect the changes technology brings.
Expertise on the ethics of AI use in practice will also be required, to ensure that AI use and outputs align with professional values and are not subject to in-built bias. Transparency will be needed. For each project, the use of AI will need to be clearly described and may have to be agreed by collaborating parties and clients. Skills in effective collaboration are not going away.
The climate emergency
Global sustainability requires a sustainable built environment. Architecture can play a leading role in transitioning our buildings, towns, and cities into sustainable places, where people can live and work well. That said, if recent shifts in politics and political leadership teach us anything, it is that the path towards a sustainable future is rarely straight, and is not guaranteed.
"I think for the next 10 years, we've got a lot of work related to climate change. We've got a lot of energy transformation work that's huge."
As the built environment is increasingly becoming a frontline in society’s response to climate breakdown, architects will need to increasingly integrate climate mitigation and adaptation into design and to engage with the broader sustainability targets of the SDGs.
This work is often highly technical. Work to standardise building performance criteria is underway, including the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard. Increasing importance will be attached to many technical skills and roles, including those related to understanding, designing, and assessing lifetime net zero performance, implementing passive design strategies, using nature-based solutions, and integrating renewable energy systems.
Materials selection is likely to undergo a transformation. It will be necessary to reduce construction waste significantly and minimise embodied carbon by selecting low-impact, recycled, or locally sourced materials. Choosing the most sustainable options may become a core skill, along with communicating with clients about the real value of sustainable materials. The ability to design for a circular economy will gain increasing importance, as space and resources become ever-more tightly constrained.
As efforts to limit global heating to 2.5 degrees falter, climate adaptation and design for resilience will become more important. Creating buildings that can withstand extreme weather events – such as flooding, droughts, and heatwaves – will be increasingly important, not only to maintain quality of life, but also to ensure that large areas of the built environment do not become uninsurable, unusable, stranded assets. Practices that can demonstrate the long-term financial value of safe, resilient, insurable design will be well placed to command commensurate fees.
As explored in the Future Business of Architecture ‘What are tomorrow’s work types’ white paper, by 2035, refurbishment could exceed 40% of architects’ revenue, mixed new and refurbishment work could reach 20%, and conservation work, 10%. New-build work may fall below 20%.
For many practices this will require a shift in design practices, and investment in the skills and roles needed for refurbishment and retrofit work.
"I think we'll be doing much more refurbishment. There won't be as much new build, because also, the net zero agenda is pushing clients, to think about what they're doing with [their buildings] … we think the shiny new building is going to be a rarity, and we're just going to be doing more of refurbishment and upgrading fabric."
To meet these demands, practices will need to invest in upskilling and role development.
The climate agenda and technological innovation may converge, with AI offering new tools to help architects design for a net zero carbon future and improved building performance.
Future business
Delivering client value
Successful practices are not only places of creativity and design expertise, they are also businesses. Their success depends on clearly demonstrating to clients the value they will gain from using their services.
"The main threat is relevance, staying relevant, so that our clients come to us architectural practices to deliver their needs."
Source: RIBA Qualitative Research, 2025, medium practice.
To remain profitable, practices will need to build competencies in areas such as AI, data analysis, building modelling, post-occupancy evaluation, and whole-lifecycle costing. These skills will help practices to articulate and demonstrate how their designs will bring operational efficiency, sustainability, and user wellbeing. For some clients, it will be important that a building has a benign effect on its context, its town or city.
Clients who also manage built assets are increasingly looking for architects who can reduce total lifecycle investment. At a base level, this means delivering a building that the client knows will be safe and will last – and charging fees appropriately. Practices that can also demonstrate greater return on investment (ROI) may be able to command higher fees.
To meet these expectations, practices will need to ensure that the buildings they deliver are durable, adaptable, and future-proof. They will need a deep understanding of construction products and materials and to keep abreast of the rapid innovations. It also demands insight into how the increasingly frequent weather extremes will affect building safety and longevity. Architects will need to work increasingly closely with structural and services engineers, technologists, and data specialists so that buildings not only meet current standards and regulations, but also can be adapted in response to constantly changing needs, technologies, climate, and society.
"We want to be able to keep the DNA of the practice, we’re very much a people-based and relationship-based practice, by which I mean the relationship we have with each other and externally with our clients. You have relationships built up over years and continue as the bedrock of the business. But then having an adaptability to new ways of working with technology and a flexibility of working as well."
For many practices, the shift from transactional design services to long-term partnerships will accelerate. Supporting clients throughout the building lifecycle will mean investment in client and building management skills.
Delivering value to clients may also mean offering new services in new ways. This could include strategic consultancy, to help clients see the benefits that good design brings, not only for them, but also for the community and building users. It might also include technology-enabled asset management, with the offer of performance monitoring, delivery, and optimisation for the life of a building – with fees based on performance, not build cost.
As building complexity grows, along with the numbers of interdependent parties involved in a building project, risk management will also become both more complex and critical. As projects grow in complexity and contractual relationships remain adversarial, practices will need to be equipped to manage an increasing range of risks: technological, legal, financial, reputational, and environmental. The skill of risk management looks set to be in increasing demand.
A changing society
Societal changes are reshaping the expectations placed upon architectural practice. Increasing awareness of equity, diversity, and inclusion, along with a responsibility towards employees, the environment, and the community, means that practice leaders will need to engage flexibly with a range of business metrics that go beyond the bottom line.
To meet these expectations, many practices will need to further develop skills in participatory design, community and cultural engagement, and ethical decision-making. As society becomes more diverse and digitally connected (and divided), the ability to navigate divergent cultural outlooks and personal world views, in order stay relevant to clients, will be essential. The challenge is often just to keep pace with rapid societal and generational change.
"As I get older, and I look at our youthful clients, they're not coming with the same experiences that my current client base do. So, their perspectives have changed in terms of what they expect of their architects, of what they think the world looks like, and therefore the kind of directives they are giving us are also changing."
The insights of younger members of practice will be just as important as the voice of experience.
Attracting future talent will depend on how well practices align with the values and aspirations of early-stage career professionals. At very least, this will mean that working in a practice is remunerated at an acceptable level. Presently this is not always so. At best, working in practice should be done well, by and for all
Younger architects are increasingly looking for practices that are ethical, technologically adept, and socially responsible. Innovative practices that develop staff and demonstrate a commitment to society will be best placed to attract and retain the best of the next generation of talent.
"I think the expectations that come with changing generations change culture. I think we worked very hard to try and generate a more people-centric culture … younger people have a very different approach to what their career is going to look like. They'll have multiple changes, and they'll move swiftly and seek to onboard information and increase the seller as they go. So, I think that changes the way we must build culture and think more carefully about what it is we're offering that isn't just about financial benefit. It is about the working environment."
A future-proofed profession
Whether the profession is successful in realising an upskilled future, with the proficiency and resiliency required to meet global challenges, is dependent on motivation and resources. The best future scenario is one where practices actively support their employees in meeting annual CPD requirements and mandatory competencies, while fostering a workplace culture of active continuous learning. In such a practice, both soft and digital skills are nurtured, and knowledge is shared freely between generations, disciplines, and levels of seniority.
The worst-case scenario is one where falling revenues mean practices cut back on staff development, as they need to maximise the number of fee-earning hours. Further, if the expertise and skills offered by architects is are not aligned to improved fees or career progression, many individuals and practices may lack the incentive to invest in their own development, their knowledge and expertise. Without this investment, the profession risks falling behind.
RIBA firmly believes that ongoing and responsive skills development is the key to unlocking a prosperous future for the profession. There are strong indicators that the demand for CPD and professional training is increasing – the demand for online CPD and professional events delivered by RIBA Academy almost doubled between 2023 and 2024, and is set to increase further in 2025.
To meet this growing demand, RIBA is taking the lead in the UK and internationally by continuing to invest in learning and development with the launch of a new Virtual Learning Environment in early 2026 and a comprehensive programme of soft skills courses planned across all career pathways and levels.
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 Architecture 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.
