Why Architects Matter - Professor Flora Samuel

Why Architects Matter: Evidencing and Communicating the Value of Architects

Professor Flora Samuel
Vice President for Research at the RIBA
Professor of Architecture in the Built Environment,
School of Architecture at the University of Reading

Flora Samuel’s aim is to help bring universities and architectural practice closer together through collaborative research that will better enable the profession to learn, innovate and demonstrate its value to those outside the field, noticeably decision makers and clients.

This talk, developed as research CPD for practices in the UK, sets out the business benefits of research and will offer a series of models of practice/academic collaboration in this area.

As the new (and first) Vice President for Research at the Royal Institute of British Architects, innovation group member on the Architects Council of Europe and Professor at the School of Built Environment at the University of Reading she has had remarkable access to built environment practitioner research globally and is well positioned to set out the current state of the field in Europe, described in detail in her book Why Architects Matter: Evidencing and Communicating the Value of Architects to be published in April 2018. A historian, as well as an architect, her work brings an inclusive humanities perspective to a what is often treated as a very technical field.