HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA
5.3. The transformation of the architectural profession in South Africa
5.3.1. The regulation of the architectural profession in South Africa
136 | P a g e
137 | P a g e were trained at technical institutions. This may have been due to the fact that ‘non-architects’ were more affordable as they were not governed by any regulated fee structure. While this presented the opportunity to access some basic architectural services, it also had potentially serious consequences as these communities were always vulnerable to malpractice and a compromised quality of their buildings and, on a broader scale, the built environment.
The democratic government (post 1994) reviewed the state of the various professions and their roles in nation-building and economic redress. This led to critical review of the legislation in order to include the broader South African communities who were largely excluded by previous legislation, resulting in many fundamental changes to professional legislation and practice and also the redefinition of the architectural profession in South Africa. The Architects Act 35 of 1970 was replaced by the Architectural Professions Act 44 of 2000 which was promulgated on 1 December 2000, and implemented on 26 January 2001. This Act replaced the existing architectural council with the South African Council for the Architectural Profession (SACAP), established on 12 September 2001.
SACAP is among six built environment professions that are governed by an over-arching statutory body, namely the Council for the Built Environment (CBE). SACAP reports to the CBE which, in turn, reports to the Minister of Public Works. As a response to broad level national transformation in a new democracy, SACAP placed transformation high on its agenda in order to make a positive impact on the built environment as reflected in its mission statement hereunder (extracted from SACAP Annual Report 2011-2012).
Make a positive impact on the built environment by ensuring excellence in performance and service-delivery by fostering collaborative relationships with role players in order to:
Effectively regulate the architectural profession
Ensure pro-active public protection
Develop a quality, sustainable and professional skills base
Ensure good governance within SACAP
Promote the role of the architectural profession in transformation
Create a legacy of humane and sustainable architecture
138 | P a g e SACAP inaugurated its new 4th term Council on 6 June 2014. This Council redefined its Vision and Mission which were adopted on 26 and 27 June 2014 (accessed online: www.sacapsa.com:
20 August 2014), which reads as follows:
Vision: People-centred architecture for South Africa
Mission: SACAP will transform, promote and regulate the architectural profession through collaborative engagement in the pursuit of excellence.
The 4th term Council extended its emphasis on relevance and transformation of the architectural profession by focusing on people-centredness, collaboration and promoting excellence in architecture. This new vision and mission statement emphasises the contextual relevance of architecture, which strives to be people-centred. Furthermore, there is a firm and explicit statement that SACAP will transform the profession - a very explicit and bold statement which underlines the determination of the Council to reform the profession and promote excellence in architecture.
Regularisation of the architectural profession is one of the key objectives of SACAP. The uncontrolled and unregulated practice of ‘non-architects’ is a serious concern of the new council and so is the reality that there is a critical mass of ‘non-architects’ doing a significant amount of work with no reasonable way of upgrading their qualification and skills. In this regard, SACAP had already established new categories of registration in addition to ‘Professional Architect’ – a uniquely South African situation. The Act thus allows for registration of all categories of architectural professionals consisting of the ranks of ‘Professional Architectural Draughtsperson’;
‘Professional Architectural Technologist’; Professional Senior Architectural Technologist’ and
‘Professional Architect’ (www.sacapsa.com). In addition to these professional registration categories, a ‘Candidate’ level registration came into effect for each of the respective professional categories. All members of the ‘Candidate’ registration category are required to pass a relevant professional practice examination, which is administered by SACAP, in order to register as professionals. Consequently, the Act subjects all practitioners to rules, regulations and the professional ‘Code of Conduct’ as defined by SACAP.
The structure of registration categories is, however, hierarchical, with the professional architect having unlimited access to the scope of work defined by scale and complexity of projects and conversely, the professional draughtsperson having the most limited scope of work. The
139 | P a g e Identification of Works (IDOW) in this sense, is rather restrictive and is in need of revision. The new 4th term Council, strives to further promote ease of academic and professional articulation in order to ‘upskill’ the critical mass of existing practitioners, from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, who had up until now, no means of such articulation other than enrolling for full- time studies at university. This had been a major impediment to transformation. Therefore, the IDOW is currently under critical review. In order to understand the existing hierarchical structure and categorisation of registration it is necessary to briefly outline the differences in registration requirements for each category of registration.
However, it is important, first, to briefly outline the international benchmarks governing architectural education and registration in South Africa. Historically, the South African accreditation system had been defined by the RIBA, which had been integral in setting the benchmarks for both professional and academic competence. The RIBA identifies three levels of professional practice examinations, namely PART 1, PART 2 and PART 3 (http://www.architecture.com/RIBA/Becomeanarchitect/Becominganarchitect.aspx). Part 1 comprises a three-year undergraduate degree, generally a BA or BSc, which equips the student with a broad understanding of architecture. Students within this stream may register with the RIBA as student members from the first year of study.
Part 2 comprises a further two years of study beyond the first undergraduate degree. This may be in the form of a B.Arch, diploma or M.Arch degree.
Part 3 is the internship period of two years working under mentorship in a practice and thereupon writing the professional practice examination for admission as Professional Architects. Given this background, it is necessary to briefly outline the ‘products’ of architectural education and their impact on practice and design in the built environment.
140 | P a g e 5.3.1.1. Architectural education and its products: the practise of architecture in the
built environment.
South Africa has a completely unique system of registration, which allows for different categories of architectural professionals and candidates, as outlined above. To this has been added a level of complexity that requires the adaptation of the RIBA model. The requirements for the category of Professional Architect are exactly the same as per the RIBA system, except for differences in nomenclature of the qualification. The Professional Architect category requires the successful completion of Parts 1, 2 and 3 as defined by the RIBA. Similarly, the requirement for the level of Professional Senior Architectural Technologist aligns with the RIBA Part 1; however the requirement for the candidate Senior Architectural Technologist to be admitted as Professional Senior Architectural Technologist, is the successful completion of the Professional Practice Examination which is a RIBA Part 3 requirement. This is unique to South Africa. The Requirements for registration of Technologists and Draughtspersons are not quite aligned to the RIBA recognised qualifications as the requisite qualifications for such registration in South Africa have emanated from the segregated South African architectural education system.
The registration of architectural professionals in South Africa further requires that the requisite qualifications align with the appropriate NQF levels as per the HEQsF. This further co-relates to the professional categories of registration as stipulated by SACAP. Table 5.2. illustrates the alignment of categories of registration with academic qualifications and the respective RIBA alignment.
SACAP Category of Professional Registration
Requisite Qualification Candidacy training period (years)
NQF Level
RIBA alignment (where applicable) Professional Architect M.Arch / M.Tech
B.Arch
2 9
8
PART1, 2 &3
Professional Senior Architectural Technologist
B.Tech / BAS/ BAS (Hons) 2 7 /8 PART 1 &3
Professional Architectural Technologist
Dip 2 6 N/A
Professional Architectural Draughtsperson
Higher Cert 2 5 N/A
Table 5.2. Alignment of SACAP categories of registration with the HEQsF and RIBA (Author 2014)
141 | P a g e Each of the professional categories is subject to SACAP’s IDOW; the reservation of work based on scale and complexity, relative to professional competence is outlined in the SACAP IDOW draft policy (www.sacapsa.com) as per ANNEXURE A. It is important to note that the reservation of work now extends beyond the scale of project which was previously defined by square meterage, to include project complexity. To date, the draft IDOW policy has undergone many revisions as a result of public participation and is intended to protect the public while not prejudicing architectural practitioners. The document is currently with the CBE for comment (SACAP Annual Report 2011-2012). According to an interview with O’Reilly and Van Stade (2014) (ANNEXURE B), the current registrar of SACAP, the IDOW is being completely transformed in order to base the identification of works on a combination of project complexity and professional competence, rather than on the current simplistic model based on square meterage. The reason for this is that the Council felt that the existing IDOW framework did not provide rational measures that distinguish the various categories of registration.
The IDOW policy and the categories of professional registration meant that SACAP had to monitor and evaluate academic standards of qualifications offered at tertiary institutions, relevant to these registration categories. SACAP consults with the CBE with regard to all matters concerning IDOW and the Code of Conduct. For all academic quality matters and qualifications articulation, SACAP is obliged to consult with the CHE and the relevant Education Training Quality Assurance (ETQA) bodies in order to determine the requisite levels of education and training standards for each qualification level. In this regard the SACAP minimum competencies required for each category is closely aligned with those of the HEQsF. Table 5.3. illustrates the alignment of architectural qualifications with the relevant NQF level that are recognised against each category of professional registration. The minimum time required for each category is indicated next to the respective qualification.
142 | P a g e CATEGORY
Candidate —
ACRONYM QUALIFICATION NQF
LEVEL
MINIMUM DURATION
Professional Architect
PrArch M Arch (Prof) [minimum 1 year, 180 credits] 9 5 YEARS (cumulative) Professional Snr
Technologist
PrSArchT
BAS Honours
B Arch (Prof) [4 years, 480 credits]
PG Diploma
8 4 YEARS
(cumulative) BAS [3 years, 360 credits]
Advanced Diploma + 1 yr WIL
7 3 YEARS
(cumulative) Professional
Technologist
PrArchT Diploma [3 years, 360 credits]
Advanced Certificate [total 240 credits, + 1 yr WIL]
6
2 YEARS (cumulative)
Professional
Draughtsperson PrArchD
Advanced Certificate [Hi Cert + 1 yr, 120 credits]
Higher Certificate
[1 year, 120 credits, + 1 year WIL]
5 1 YEAR
(cumulative) Table 5.3. Alignment of SACAP categories of registration with the relevant qualifications and NQF levels (Adapted from SACAP 2010). Note: WIL denotes Work Integrated Learning
Each of the categories of registration, therefore, is defined by a limited scope of professional competence in line with the respective level of academic training. This in turn affects skills sets and ability to practise design in the built environment. Table 5.4. illustrates the 10 essential skills and knowledge areas, known as competencies that SACAP has deemed to be necessary to practice architecture in the built environment.
Architectural design 1
Environmental relationships 2
Construction technology 3
The structure of buildings 4
Contextual & urban relationships 5
Architectural history, theory & precedent 6
Building services & related technologies 7
Contract documentation and administration 8
Computer applications 9
Office practice, legal aspects and ethics 10
Table 5.4. Skills and knowledge areas for the practise of architecture (SACAP 2010)
The 10 competencies above affect each category to a greater or lesser extent, however all categories of registered persons are required to be competent and skilled in each of the 10 skills
143 | P a g e and knowledge areas. For, example, the architect is required to have the highest possible level of competence in each of the skills and knowledge areas, while the technologist may have varying degrees of competence and certainly less so in items 1, 5 and 6 of the table. Hence, the level of design ability in the built environment is directly related to the level of qualification.
As registered persons are expected to have the required level of skill and knowledge in order to perform in an ethical and professional manner, SACAP has to monitor and evaluate the standards of qualifications at architectural learning sites (ALSs) - a quality control measure. The primary quality assurance mechanism of architectural education at ALSs is the SACAP validation process.