A crisis of trust

More than 30 people have died and over 3000 homes have been destroyed by this disaster. Tens of thousands have been traumatised, whilst the impacts on both mental and physical health will stay with communities for a very long time.

For many, the Australian summer is typically a time to reflect on the year past and consider the year ahead. What this summer has taught us all is that change is needed. Unless our society makes what is becoming an increasingly sharp change of direction to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, this will be the new Australian Summer. In reality if we don’t change, this summer might eventually be considered one of the better ones as our climate continues to deteriorate.

Last year, the architecture profession in Australia began to shift to a far more active stance. A group of architects established the Australian chapter of Architects Declare, a movement that began in the United Kingdom and is spreading globally. Since the Australian launch, 850 Architecture practices have signed a detailed pledge to act upon our climate and biodiversity crisis.

This pledge was also backed up by the Australian Institute of Architects encouraging all of their members to participate in the mass climate demonstrations. In Melbourne alone it was estimated that over 150,000 people attended this rally, making it one of the biggest since either the anti-Iraq war protests or possibly even the anti-Vietnam War protests. Whilst the media quite rightly focused on the school children who organised the protest, it was also unprecedented for architects to act collectively and essentially go on strike.

As an interesting aside, this event in itself vindicates the 2019 Australian Institute of Architects conference on collective agency. Whilst some might still be grumpy about the reduced number of project show-and-tell sessions, there is no doubt that architects working in a collective way is an emerging trend that was worthy of exploration.

Over the summer, another trend has continued to emerge. Just like a gradually heating climate that is showing increasingly visible signs, we are also facing an additional crisis. A crisis of trust.

During the bushfire emergency, many Australians completely lost faith in their Federal Government and in particular their Prime Minister, to act. From being missing in action in Hawaii, to putting out political advertisements, failing to provide timely federal assistance and failing to acknowledge the scientific fact that this emergency was a result of climate change and was predicted to occur.

For six weeks, large geographic areas with sizable populations including Canberra and Sydney faced some of the worst air quality in the world. It was hazardous to breathe, even inside. For six weeks this danger continued. The only defences were air purifiers and P2 smoke masks, both of which sold out in a matter of days. Eventually after weeks of saying there was nothing that the Federal Government could do, they released hundreds of thousands of P2 masks from the national stockpile. The ones they keep in case of emergency.

So there is little wonder that in January people did not want to shake the Prime Ministers hand. However the decay in trust is not even remotely isolated to politics. Over the last few months police forces, both state and federal, have taken significant hits on their trust. With the raiding of journalist homes and the failure to investigate fraudulent documents used by Federal Ministers, the Australian Federal Police are beginning to look entirely like muscle for the Liberal Party. At a state level, the over-reactions to the Extinction Rebellion rallies and of course the huge debacle over the Lawyer X scandal have also decayed community trust.

The corrosion of trust seeps out even further. Charities have been accused of cashing in bushfire donations by not distributing the majority of funds donated in a timely way. Some churches continue to bleed trust through failing to take adequate child protection steps. These are organisations that should have the highest levels of trust in our community and yet here we are.

Here is also where architects come into the picture. Would an architect advise their family to invest in an off the plan apartment? Would they advise a close friend to buy an apartment completed in 2015? The building industry in Australia has had a woeful decade in terms of trust decay. Building defects have caused huge financial stress on people who are working hard to just pay the mortgage on their home. Buildings that should have been safe are not.

The bushfire crisis also revealed another magnitude of built environment failure. Our cities are not even close to ready, for what is coming. At times this summer there were virtually no buildings in Canberra that had safe clean air within. For all the talk about resilience, there was no clean air to breathe. All buildings that were designed to ventilate naturally had to choose between either, oppressive unhealthy heat, or oppressive unhealthy air.

For now this particular failure has not resulted in a trust downgrade because it is seen as unprecedented. This is clearly a one-time grace period. If we don’t start addressing a clean air mode for buildings, particularly critical infrastructure like hospitals and community facilities, then we again risk the trust of the community.

In these times trust is a very valuable commodity. When the public lose trust in architects, they turn to celebrities and snake oil sales people for their expertise.

A popular thought amongst many architects in recent times is that it is our communication to the public that has been problematic. We don’t sell the value of design, the benefits of our services or the inherent good that high quality architecture can bring and therefore this is why architects are not engaged as much as they should be. However perhaps this is like architects posting a promotional video during a bushfire. Our ability to communicate with the public has never been better yet our involvement with the built environment continues to be constrained.

Trust is an underlying issue.

We live in precarious times. With so many crises – environmental, political, social and professional – our solutions can no longer be piecemeal. The problems are systemic. Institutions, politicians, businesses and professions must be willing to change their systems if they are to regain public trust. Relying upon outdated systems to address new problems is asking for failure.

Architects cannot afford to be sitting on a beach, while others try to fix our built environment.

Architecture is for everyone

To assist with the bushfire recovery, the Australian Institute of Architects have set up Architects Assist.

Visit www.architectsassist.com.au to find out more.