The profession and its regulation

The last term of the fourth year opens in an office rather than a studio. Professor Thomas Eberle has practiced architecture for thirty-one years and is one of the two founding principals of Eberle Moss Architects, a firm of twenty-eight people with an office on the second floor of an old warehouse in the North Loop of Minneapolis. He teaches professional practice every winter, and he holds the first class in the firm's conference room so that the four students, Wren, Callum, Ingrid and Joon-ho, can hear the phones and see the plotter running. On the table are three objects: a rubber stamp, a thick binder of contracts, and an insurance policy. Eberle says that by the end of the term the students should understand why each of those things exists, who controls it and what it costs to use it carelessly.

He begins with the stamp. It is his professional seal, and it carries his name, the word 'Architect', the State of Minnesota and his license number. When he presses it onto a drawing he is telling the building official, the contractor and the public that the drawing was prepared under his direct supervision and that he takes professional responsibility for it. No one else in the room may use it, and no drawing for a building of any size may be issued for a permit without a stamp like it. The stamp is the visible end of a long chain of law, education, experience and examination, and this course follows that chain from beginning to end.

What makes architecture a profession

Many occupations call themselves professions, but the word has a precise meaning in the law and in the history of work. A profession is an occupation in which practitioners apply specialized knowledge and judgment on behalf of others who cannot easily judge the quality of the work for themselves, and in which the public has granted the practitioners a measure of self-government in exchange for a duty to put the public interest first. Medicine, law, engineering and architecture share these features. A patient cannot check a diagnosis, a client cannot check a structural calculation, and a person walking into a theater cannot check that the exits were designed for the number of people in the room. Society therefore controls who may do the work, rather than trying to check every piece of work after it is done.

Eberle lists four features that the students will meet again and again. The first is a body of specialized knowledge, taught in accredited schools and tested by examination. The second is a period of supervised experience, in which a newcomer learns to apply that knowledge on real projects under someone who is already licensed. The third is a code of conduct that puts duties to the public, clients and colleagues above the practitioner's own interest. The fourth is regulation by law, usually through a body that the government has created or recognized, with the power to admit, discipline and remove practitioners. A profession that loses the public's trust can lose its self-government, and the history of the regulated professions includes several moments when legislators took powers back after a scandal.

Architecture adds features of its own. Architects design for people who will never meet them: the occupants of a building, its neighbors and the people who will use the street in front of it for a century. Their work is public in a way that a lawyer's advice is not. They also work in a crowded field. Engineers, interior designers, technologists, contractors and design-builders all do some of the work that architects do, and the boundaries between them are drawn by law, not by custom. The students will spend part of this term learning exactly where those boundaries lie, because a firm that crosses them, or allows an unlicensed person to cross them, can face fines and the loss of its right to practice.

Why architecture is regulated

The modern regulation of architecture began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when cities were growing quickly and fires, collapses and unhealthy housing were common. Illinois passed the first architectural licensing law in the United States in 1897, after a period in which anyone could call themselves an architect and some buildings in Chicago were designed by people with little training. In Canada the provincial associations were created by provincial statutes around the same time, beginning with Ontario in 1889 and Quebec in 1890, and the other provinces followed over the next decades. Today every Canadian province and territory and every US state regulates architecture, though the details differ.

The core of the argument is public safety. A building that is badly designed can burn, collapse, poison its occupants or trap them in a fire. Building codes set minimum standards, but codes do not design buildings; someone has to apply them to a particular site, program and budget, and that person must know how. Licensing is the public's way of making sure that the person who designs a building of a certain size and use has been educated, has worked under supervision and has passed an examination. A second argument is consumer protection. Clients spend large sums on buildings and rely on their architect's advice about cost, schedule and contracts. A licensing body can investigate complaints and discipline architects who mislead or neglect their clients.

Regulation also has costs. It limits who may offer services, which can raise prices and exclude talented people who took unusual paths. Critics have argued for decades that licensing requirements are longer and more expensive than public safety needs, and some have argued that they have kept the profession less diverse than the population it serves. Lesson 11 returns to this question. Eberle wants the students to hold two ideas at once: licensing protects the public and gives the profession its standing, and it also deserves scrutiny, because rules that protect the public can drift into rules that protect the people who already hold the license.

Practice acts and title acts

Laws that regulate a profession come in two kinds. A title act protects a name. Only people who meet the requirements may call themselves architects, but anyone may do the work as long as they do not use the title. A practice act goes further: it defines the practice of architecture and makes it an offense for an unlicensed person to do that work, whatever they call themselves. Most jurisdictions in North America have practice acts for architecture, with exemptions for small buildings and certain kinds of work. The difference matters to everyone in an office. A recent graduate may do almost any kind of design work under the supervision of a licensed architect, but may not offer architectural services to the public or sign drawings, and may not use the title 'architect' until licensed.

Minnesota regulates architecture under chapter 326 of its statutes, which creates a single board for several design professions: the Board of Architecture, Engineering, Land Surveying, Landscape Architecture, Geoscience and Interior Design, known by its initials as AELSLAGID. The law defines the practice of architecture and makes it unlawful for an unlicensed person to practice it or to use the title 'architect'. Like every practice act it has exemptions, including work done by employees under the supervision of a licensed architect and certain small buildings, such as many single-family homes and small farm and commercial buildings below the limits the law sets. Engineers may design some buildings that overlap with architecture, and the boundary between the two professions is set by the definitions in the statute. Even an exempt person may not call themselves an architect.

Self-regulation and public accountability

In the United States, architects are regulated by state boards appointed by the governor. Minnesota's AELSLAGID board includes licensed members from each of the professions it regulates and public members who are not licensed, and its staff process applications, renewals and complaints. The board is a government body, not a membership association; it does not advocate for architects or promote the profession. That role belongs to voluntary organizations such as the American Institute of Architects and its state component, AIA Minnesota. The separation is sharper than in many other countries, and it means that an architect deals with two quite different organizations: the board, which can take away the license, and the professional association, which offers education, contract documents, advocacy and community but has no power over the license itself.

Every regulator handles complaints. A client, a building official, a contractor or a member of the public may complain that an architect acted incompetently, dishonestly or unethically. The regulator investigates, and if the complaint is serious it can hold a hearing. The outcomes range from dismissal of the complaint through a reprimand, conditions on practice, additional education and fines to suspension or cancellation of the license. Many complaints concern things that architects think of as business matters rather than design: failing to put an agreement in writing, missing deadlines, not returning calls, stamping drawings that the architect did not supervise, or practicing outside the scope of a license. Eberle has sat on a complaints committee, and his first piece of advice is that most of the complaints he saw could have been prevented by a clear written contract and regular communication.

The regulated organizations around the profession

Students often find the alphabet of organizations confusing, so Eberle draws a table on the whiteboard. Some organizations regulate the profession and protect the public; some accredit the schools; some coordinate examinations and mobility between jurisdictions; and some are voluntary associations that serve architects. Knowing which is which tells a young architect where to go with a question and whose rules are binding.

Eberle points out that the voluntary association and the regulator sometimes have overlapping names and members, and young architects sometimes assume that membership in the association is the same as a license. It is not. An architect can be licensed in Minnesota and never join the AIA, and a member of the association who loses a license cannot practice even though they can still attend the association's events. The reverse also matters: an association's code of ethics applies only to its members, while the regulator's rules of conduct apply to everyone it licenses.

Practicing across borders

Architects increasingly work in more than one state. Each state issues its own license, so an architect licensed in Minnesota who wins a commission in Wisconsin must also be licensed there before offering services. The NCARB Certificate makes this easier: it records the architect's education, experience and examination in a form that most boards accept, so the architect can apply for a reciprocal license without proving everything again. Reciprocal licenses are common, and NCARB counts far more of them than there are architects. Between the United States and Canada, a mutual recognition agreement that took effect on 1 January 2014 lets architects licensed in one country obtain a license in a participating jurisdiction of the other. Applicants must be licensed in good standing at home, have at least 2,000 hours of experience as a licensed architect at home, and hold an NCARB Certificate. The agreement replaced an earlier one from 1994.

Firms face rules too. Most jurisdictions require a firm that offers architectural services to be owned or controlled in a particular way, or to hold a permit or certificate, and to have a licensed architect who takes responsibility for the work. Minnesota requires a firm that offers architectural services to have a licensed architect in responsible charge and to register with the board, and the rules on firm names and ownership differ from state to state. Lesson 9 returns to these rules when the students set up a small office of their own.

# Does this project need a licensed architect? A teaching sketch with simplified thresholds.
# (Each state's law has its own definitions and exemptions; check the statute for real projects.)
def needs_architect(use, area_ft2, levels):
    if use == "single-family" and levels <= 3:
        return False
    if use in {"farm", "small commercial"} and area_ft2 <= 5000 and levels <= 2:
        return False
    return True

projects = [
    ("single-family", 2400, 2, "custom house"),
    ("small commercial", 4200, 1, "corner shop"),
    ("assembly", 3200, 1, "community hall"),
    ("residential", 47000, 5, "warehouse conversion to homes"),
]
for use, area, lv, name in projects:
    who = "licensed architect" if needs_architect(use, area, lv) else "exempt"
    print(f"{name:<30} {use:<16} {area:>6} ft2 {lv} levels -> {who}")

custom house                   single-family      2400 ft2 2 levels -> exempt
corner shop                    small commercial   4200 ft2 1 levels -> exempt
community hall                 assembly           3200 ft2 1 levels -> licensed architect
warehouse conversion to homes  residential       47000 ft2 5 levels -> licensed architect

The thresholds in the sketch are simplified for teaching; each state writes its own, and Minnesota's statute should be read for any real project. The point is the shape of the law. An assembly building of any size, such as a small community hall, is regulated because the people inside are at higher risk in a fire, and the warehouse conversion from last term needs a licensed architect several times over. When a client asks whether they really need an architect, the honest answer begins with the statute and ends with the building official, who will not issue a permit for a regulated building without sealed drawings.

Exercise 1: mapping the profession

• Look up the public register of the Minnesota AELSLAGID board and find the record of an architect whose work you admire. Note what information the register shows.
• Read the definition of the practice of architecture in chapter 326 of the Minnesota statutes and write it out in your own words in no more than fifty words.
• List three kinds of building work that an unlicensed person may legally do in your jurisdiction, and three kinds that only a licensed architect may do.
• Draw a diagram of the organizations described in this lesson and show which ones can grant or remove the right to practice.

Self-check

• Can I explain the difference between a title act and a practice act?
• Can I explain why the public regulates architecture rather than checking each building after it is built?
• Do I know which organization licenses architects where I intend to practice?
• Can I explain why membership in the professional association is not the same as a license?