Becoming Professionals: The Changing Role of the Architect in the 21st Century

What does it mean to educate an architect today, and what role should architects play in shaping the world of tomorrow? Are architecture’s educational institutions producing the critical, adaptive, ethically trained professionals the planet urgently needs, or merely reproducing the profession as it was?

These are not rhetorical questions; they are the urgent, unresolved challenges at the centre of debate in this session, organised jointly by the UIA Architectural Education Commission and UNESCO. At a historical juncture when the profession risks irrelevance if it cannot articulate its public value, this session moves deliberately from diagnosis to action. UIA President Regina Gonthier offers reflections on the profession’s evolving global mandate. A UNESCO representative addresses the organisation’s strategic vision for education in the built environment, while UNESCO Delegate to the UIA Jana Revedin connects these institutional frameworks to on-the-ground pedagogical realities. Commission Co-Directors Ashraf M. Salama and Selma Harrington then present key outcomes from the Global Survey and interrogate a detailed European case study, exposing both the progress made and the structural obstacles that persist. The session culminates in a forward-looking proposal for a series of White Papers, a collaborative initiative with the potential to reshape international policy on architectural education for the coming decade. This session demands an honest answer to the questions raised, and establishes a path toward what comes next.