**Disclaimer - normally you would read this on LinkedIn, but we had a mega session to close out the year, so mega blog ensues. Thanking you for your patience.

Dear readers,

I caught up with regular ArchiTeam Cooperative Ltd Coffee Club goer Giovanni Mercuri and special guests Regina Kaluzny and Sarah Hobday-North. This was an important catch up as Regina had her architects registration exam confirmed, so will soon be known as … Regina Kaluzy, Registered Architect any day now. As a forever friend and colleague of Reggie’s I’m so glad to have shared in this news, and all my best wishes for the new opportunities that being registered will surely bring…!

I try not to be the story in all these blogs I post (says the guy in all the photos!), I’m merely a good observer. This Coffee Club there were lots of questions about the ArchiTEAM AGM (Thursday 27th November’25) and where to next for the Coop.

There were quite a few questions on the day about the election process, particularly the change from Preferential to First-Past-The-Post which members (to me at least, privately) have suggested allegedly may have changed the outcome. Well we have an outcome but always moving forward. I’m glad that during the AGM the ArchiTEAM Board and CEO committed to keeping to Preferential from now on, as they acknowledged it is the prevailing voting system we have here in Australia - designed to encourage participation, fairness and a broad representation of ideas.

I think now is the milestone of more participation and advocacy in the profession. Just look at the higher-than-usual number of candidates particiating with the ArchiTEAM Elections, and why is this? The profession is struggling - particularly SME’s! A lot of practices have taken a dive and are feeling the affects of bifurcated services, recently higher-for-longer interest rates, now high construction costs (driven upwards by the inflation experienced during the Lockdown / Covid peaks) and reduced spending in government-led projects and infrastructure. Of course, lots of members who are passionate and bring with them NEW POLICY IDEAS are going to put their hands up to run – from now on it seems.

I'm glad I was there to hear lots of questions and answers without notice from the members and Board Directors and I’m looking forward to reading the follow ups offered.

The oncoming board will do well, but where to next? Will the Coop begin to expand into holding branches in other states and move beyond being Melbourne / Victoria Centric? Well, it seems that lots of other professional associations are thinking this way, just look at the Association of Consulting Architects, Regional Architecture Association, Parlour Inc: gender, equity, architecture (and the Australian Institute of Architects). Advocacy should be the order of the next 3 years. Just look at social media, and the ACA and the AIA having a bit of storm of highlighting the visits to Canberra , these are fantastic advocacy initiatives and projects that should bring about real change and hopefully… sustainable architectural practice.

Back to Coffee Club - great discussion off the back of the ACA’s Regional Practice Forum. Heaps of other professions / trades have fee scales, so why not architects? If the ACCC doesn’t allow for fee scales to prevent cartel-style trading in architectural practice (like the “good old days”, any of you out there remember this??), then the other the elephant in the room is TIME. And any of you who run any business will know, TIME is your CURRENCY, and this is derived from your FEES. Each practice defines the value of 1 hour service to offer creative knowledge based serivces. When clients receive fee proposals that should be a question high in their mind, “has my consultant allowed enough time to service the project?”. The cynic maverick out there might say “well that’s your risk, you are trying to win the project (and maybe you negotiate on fee changes later on)”, but the cautious and sensitive practitioner in me says “that’s a recipe for conflict later on – I’d rather offer what is fair for everyone.” What I am trying to say here is that TIME isn’t a widely understood metric in what goes into most professional services, and the translation to the value of fees.

Sarah Hobday-North (@Architect GP) (no stethoscope today, which made me sad) suggested a different path, particularly for residential work. In the commercial / public world there will always be a fight for projects within the industry. Architects themselves don’t have much power to increase the amount of public work on offer... However the upside is in the Residential sector less than 5% of households use an architect – there is 95% of potential untapped market who need architects to provide strategic design thinking – even if the architect is not involved in the entire project.

For Sarah, TIME is very valuable, and she puts it out in the open regardless of whether she is charging Hourlys or Lump Sum for services. Transparency is key.

Her rationale is, “If more architects can position themselves to make “normal” houses 10% or 20% better, across 95% of housing that represents a HUGE uplift in quality and enjoyment of homes. Don’t compare partial services to full services. Compare them to no architectural service at all!”, and that’s the existential question about partial services that each architect wrestles with daily!

I’m paraphrasing Sarah here, “Each of us has massive amounts of design and procurement knowledge – any type of client would benefit from hearing this. You know, you have a problem with your mind, go and see a Psychologist; you got a problem with your body, go and see a Doctor, if you got a problem with your home – go and see an architect”. Like doctors and psychologists, architects then need a low barrier to cost and time in the services, so we can diagnose the problems and, provide a strategy the client can use.

The influence on projects is right from the start, remaining within an “advisory only” role. If clients wish for a more ongoing or defined architectural service, then that’s up to them. The point of this angle is to influence the 95% of households in improving their homes from what they currently are and gaining the benefit of design thinking.

I must admit this confronts my idea of architectural practice – it’s a wholistic and client-centred service where the by-product is a built outcome, and key is navigating the overall process. Architectural ambition for me is the act of building your clients’ projects. The idea to only be a small part of it challenges my ambition for practice. But on the other hand, if you thought of this like “policy” that influences design outcomes that improves heaps of lives, then you can see the upside of the benefits.

Where is the greatest impact of our services and knowledge? Depends who you ask and where they sit on the practice spectrum.

****

Well, that's it for the ArchiTeam Cooperative Ltd Coffee Club Melbourne Chapter for 2025. For what has been a strange & challenging year - the end is upon us. Wishing all of you a safe and festive holiday season with each of your friends and families,

Cheers, RH

Redmond Hamlett is a Director (Projects) at WHDA.

Provocations in practice PART 4 – ARCHITEAM COFFEE CLUB December’25