As ICE’s Part 3 turns 20, is there a new blueprint for architectural education?

This year marks the 20th anniversary of ICE’s one-year Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Architecture, a ‘Part 3’ course that prepares aspiring architects for their final assessment. Inside ICE speaks to Dr Timothy Brittain-Catlin to hear about proposals to shake up architects’ pathway to Part 3.

For anyone looking to become an architect, passing the Part 3 exam is the culmination of many years’ hard work across study and practice. ICE has been running its Part 3 course for 20 years, a twelve-month programme that now welcomes students following ICE’s apprenticeship Master’s as well as those who take the traditional route. While it’s always been a very prescriptive pathway, the profession’s regulatory body, the Architects’ Registration Board (ARB), has recently opened public consultation on major reforms to the qualification process, aiming to widen access to the profession.

Creating more opportunities for more people

Hugh Simpson, Chef Executive and Registrar at the Architects Registration Board, claims that the Board’s “education and training proposals represent a landmark for the future of the profession – the first large-scale review in as much as five decades.” The aim, he says, is to “create a high-quality education model for the 21st century”, and that, explains Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Course Leader of ICE’s MSt Architecture Apprenticeship, means offering a broader range of access opportunities.

“What they’re saying is that the level of professional competence and experience required at the Part 3 stage is going to stay the same, but how you get there is up to you,” says Timothy. “It means, for example, a Part 2 apprenticeship like ours could take students who have studied something other than an architecture degree, as long as they can show their capabilities.”

One big potential advantage of this more competency-based approach, says Timothy, is that it should expand eligibility to people who have valuable skills gained in related fields: “These proposals make it possible for people to come into architecture from, say, the building professions. It means people who studied architecture in other countries would no longer be ruled out, and the same goes for people who qualified as architectural technologists, for example. Until now, they’ve all had to re-start from the beginning, despite potentially being senior consultants who have been working with buildings all their lives.

Towards a more diverse profession

In broadly supporting the proposed reforms, Timothy welcomes the greater diversity they’re likely to bring to architectural practices, although cautions against expecting overnight change.

“I want to see people coming into the profession of architecture from a wider range of building experience and knowledge, as well as from a broader range of backgrounds in line with the Institute’s aspiration to encourage diversity and inclusion. And, of course, ICE’s commitment to lifelong learning fits well with how the new proposals should open doors to people at different stages of their careers.

“However, there’s a long way to go before any of this is approved or implemented. But what’s in the distance is good for the profession, I believe, and the process will give us a chance to think through some of the most fundamental questions about what architectural training looks like.