Architecture as a benchmark of society vitality. Architecture also as a benchmark of cooperation within EU in the sense of involvement other activities like – cultural, legislation, business, and technical skills, they are related to profession. With a holistic approach, architects should be recognized as leaders rather than mere followers of a process.
Architecture must defend its position where it is strong – work that is tailored and representative of the certain culture level. The goal is not competition for market share but the preservation of the profession as an indispensable field providing a quality to the human needs to live in a sustainable environment.
Each region should have a regulation (ex-ante or ex-post) that it is used to in practice. Such regulations themselves shouldn´t present obstacles for cross-border services but despite that, single market doesn’t work as well as it could. Together with particular civil laws, there are problems pursuant to the fact that ex-ante and ex-post regulations are exercised in different proportions together, which leads to an inconsistency of the systems and needless burdens.
The lack of claims for cross-border services shouldn´t be interpreted from statistics as low interest but rather as a system failure. There should be an increase in efforts to rectify regimes at the national levels. The information exchange about experiences through ACE plays an irreplaceable part here.
The profession is under the stress of technical requirements, regulations. Such tendencies are heading to replace the key role of the profession with some particular “approaches” which are fragmenting the profession into various (green, social, smart facades) disciplines and those “guaranteed” by certificates.
European society sees ourselves as a leader in quality and environment attention. But sustainability assessments are relative and could be challenged, if, for instance, embodied energy or urban context of building would have higher priority.
Continuous digitalism - the tools and procedures are becoming more important than the mission. Architects can’t stay behind evolution, but freedom of choice for tools to fulfill scope of work must be sustained. Ace should be here at position of interpretation and “guard” against a risk of BIM legal obligation.
Importance of architecture competitions as example of best practice public procurement. ACE should consider to be more proactive in promotion of competitions at own website. At the European level, such common overview doesn’t exist and could be promotion for ACE to. Last but not least, this presents a source of argumentation to defend profession as a best way to achieve aesthetic, functional and sustainable buildings.