January_1970 — Page 15

public relations.

2. To undertake full responsibili-

ties in educational matters. 3. To make improvements in pro- fessional practice conditions. In our initial membership drive, we made a special effort to enlist the sup- port of members who were employed in the government sector, because we felt that we could not advance the work of the profession as a whole without integrating the interest of the private and public sectors. Within the first two years we managed to increase the professional membership from 80 to 120 members.

In the past the most active of coun- cils have often been confronted with accusations from non-participating members that there was a dearth of institute activity, and although circu- lars and annual publications were sporadically issued, many members re- main out of touch, not necessarily by choice.

In June 1966 we decided to publish a monthly journal, the SIAJ, as a means of communicating with our own members, as well as to foster a greater public awareness of the work of the institute; in addition to this, the SIA also produced a yearbook and our previous annual Rumah was to become a periodical on special themes.

On the education front we es- tablished a substantive Board of Archi- tectural Education, as a formal authority to supersede our education committees. The work of the board was naturally focussed on the School of Architecture, with particular re- ference to uplifting of standards and recognition. The Board has also man- aged to obtain endowments for the award of fellowships and studentships; the annual fellowship has varied in stipend between S$4000 - $8000.

In early 1969 the institute granted recognition to the local School of Architecture up to intermediate level. Recognition was also granted in paral- lel by the PAM and the RIBA, who were also represented by their respec- tive visiting boards.

Professional practice affairs are of course the raison d'etre of having a professional institute in the first place. So far the subject has been dealt with by committee action, which tends to vary in accordance with the response of members in practice and their rela- tive unanimity about priorities for action.

It is probably a common experi- ence that members of professional institutes will continue to feel that their practice interests have not been.

Far East BUILDER, January 1970

sufficiently catered for by their insti- tute. The fact remains that the ability of an annually nominated committee to tackle practice problems remains limited, and although the institute has been represented on the Registration Board and also on the Development Control Committee in Singapore, its effectiveness will continue to leave a lot to be desired, until the profession itself is able to recondition its ap- proach to ethics and research stan- dards in particular and to recon- dition these in the light of local practical circumstances.

In some respects, the most effective way to improve the profession may well be to integrate the professional institute with the Registration Board, as is the case in South Africa, New Zealand and apparently Korea. Suiting the times

The steps taken so far in Singapore are the first stage of a much more challenging process to give the profes- sional institute a truly effective per- manent structure. It has been neces- sary to make a break-through and to size up the response, the resources and the problems; and having done this, it is desirable to go further to achieve a fully efficient organisational set-up with adequate full-time staff to carry out the perennial tasks of the institute. We must now write the specifications and define the performance standards, raise the finance and re-construct our concept of a professional institute suit- able for our times.

CAA Asian Conference tribution towards the work of their own professional bodies. It would cer- tainly help if members would think about the pros and cons of dual or multiple memberships, and to decide in favour of supporting their local institute to a greater extent. For exam- ple, it would be possible to finance the basic functions of the professional institute by annual subscriptions from professional firms. In Singapore if the 54 firms would each contribute $200 per year, the professional institute would be able to increase its budget by $10,800.

It is a common complaint from non-members or from disenchanted members that they are not getting their value for subscription money. With the existing combination of amateur and part-time effort, aided in our case by a minimal infrastructure, it will not be easy to demonstrate the full effectiveness of a professional institute. The way ahead lies in plan- ning for an efficient permanent es- tablishment that can undertake the essential basic functions of a national professional institute and to seek funds for this accordingly.

The management problems of pro- fessional institutes are of urgent priori- ty, and professional members must ask themselves if they wish to be content with a collective institute that is in many respects often less efficient in manpower and resources than the smallest and most humble architect's office in existence.

Postscript

We once thought of progress in terms of transforming ourselves from a The CAA is an association of insti- social club into a professional institutes; it has been in existence since tute. In this day and age even the social clubs have equipped themselves with organisational and managerial facilities for greater efficiency. By comparison our professional institutes are in many cases ill-equipped and under-financed.

Each year the SIA collects annual subscriptions from some 129 full 129 full members, amounting to S$6,450. (Our contribution to the CAA, at 3/- per head, amounts to $141.351). In Singa- pore there are 190 registered architects who pay a total of $14,250 to the Registration Board. Of this number, 143 are members of the RIBA, to which they contribute $6,580, an amount larger than is obtained by the local institute. Additionally 42 mem- bers belong to the RAIA, to which they pay a total of $1,514.

This set of figures clearly suggests that members in practice in Singapore need to reassess their financial con-

1965, on the assumption that its mem- bers have achieved the ability to manage their own affairs, and are therefore ready to measure up to common yard- sticks in education and in practice. In actual fact, many members of the CAA have essentially remained as allied so- cieties of the RIBA, and are in the throes of finding their own feet and do not have enough resources or experi- ence to establish their national validity.

It can therefore be argued that priority for CAA action should be to boost and to assist the development of each and every institute, to the point where they can in the first place manage professional affairs in their own territory. With reference to educational standards it would be more worthwhile to re-examine the training of architects in relation to needs in developing countries, and to help each professional institute es- tablish its own standards.

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