Risk, Regulation and the Practices of Architects

There is a plethora of regulation relating to building form and performance and, seemingly, much more emphasis on risk identification and its management, particularly in relation to the processes underpinning the development and delivery of building projects. It appears that the practices of architects, like other urban design professionals, are implicated in the construction of risky objects and their mitigation by recourse to systems of managerial governance. Drawing on survey and interview data, it is suggested that a new focus for the understanding of architecture, and urban design more generally, ought to be consideration of the interrelationships between creativity, risk and regulation. The paper describes and evaluates architects’ understanding of, and responses to, what they perceive to be increased exposure to risk (and its regulation) in the design process. The paper is built around the proposition that risk and its regulation are entwined with organisational changes in the nature of project development and delivery, and linked with the emergence of what might be regarded as diffused or dispersed organisational forms that in and of themselves become harbingers of risk while also being one of the means to create new forms of risk governance. In turn, many of architects’ responses to risk revolve around procedures to secure reputation in contexts where loss of standing and repute is perceived to be a significant threat.