Back
Deep Dive in Design with Kelley Cheng: Goodbye Seems to be the Hardest Word
Cosentino Singapore hosted a stimulating and meaningful discussion on why young architects are quitting the profession.
It was an exciting night at Cosentino City Singapore where the second session of Deep Dive in Design took place with an amazing line-up of speakers from the world of architecture and design taking part in the talk titled Goodbye Seems to be the Hardest Word, addressing a worrying trend that coincidentally made it to the news headlines recently on why young architects are quitting the profession. Over 100 attendees made up of seasoned design practitioners and students huddled to listen to the talk, including a distinguished guest, Larry Ng, group director of URA.
Deep Dive in Design is a series of quarterly talks that is curated and moderated by the Creative Director of The Press Room, Founder of Studio SML, and President’s Design Award Recipient, Kelley Cheng. The series aims to shine the light on all things design-related, enabling designers of different genres to come together and discuss architecture, design and life. This collaboration builds on C-TOP Design mission to support design professionals at all stages of their creative process.
This quarter, four speakers were invited to share their thoughts and opinions on the topic; each of them lending a different voice and perspective to the matter:
- Melvin HJ Tan, President, Singapore Institute of Architects
Melvin is the Deputy Managing Director and founding partner of Singapore-based LAUD Architects, an award-winning boutique practice established in 2004.
- Seah Chee Huang, CEO, DP Architects
Chee Huang is a firm believer in purpose-driven architecture that synergises economic, environmental and social dynamics. His key pursuits are community-centric developments.
- Fiona Tan, Principal, Atelier IF
Fiona graduated from her B. Arch in NUS and was awarded the Design Overseas Scholarship to do her M.Arch in the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
- Wu Zhuoyi, UI/UX Designer
An architect in his previous life, Zhuoyi is a UX Designer currently working in a local startup. He has been involved in the local product design community for the past three years.
Low wages, long working hours, heavy workloads, and a lack of work-life balance are common reasons why young architects leave the fraternity.
“Some of my peers are really passionate about the profession and want to stay, but it’s just so hard,”laments Zhuoyi on the state of the profession. He represents the whopping 93% of young architect graduates who chose to leave the profession, signifying the need for a ‘national reset’ for fresh thinking, decisive leadership and concerted actions to retain talents.
As president of Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA), Melvin shared that there are working plans that the organisation is actively taking to retain and develop talent in the profession, especially on the wage front. While a structured fee scale is out of the question due to competition laws, he said that SIA is working on a value articulation framework which will list all the works and costs that architects undertake. This would help architects create a commensurate fee structure that is fair to the breadth of responsibilities and liabilities that architects take in every project.
Chee Huang, who was also president of SIA (2018 – 2020), said that the issue goes beyond just the architect fraternity which requires a concerted action involving policy-makers and the wider construction and building sectors. He also shared that practices must actively create value for their people to stop the brain drain.
Fiona lent her voice to the architects who left bigger firms to start their own practices in hopes of honing their creative side. Speaking of her disillusionment during the beginning of her career where complex administrative tasks took away the joy from design work, she shared her hope that design firms would value and develop young talents to uphold the optimism and idealism that come with the profession.
