conditions for practicing the architectural profession
This is primarily due to a fairly widespread lack of job satisfaction. This is also confirmed by the dozens if not hundreds of conversations I have with members of our district Chamber of Architects. It is difficult to pose the thesis that suddenly a large number of architects have adopted a patient attitude and have nothing particularly positive to say about their work, and this theme certainly runs through at least half of the conversations. Neither gender nor age matter, in complaining about their work. It is likely that job satisfaction, breaks down in our profession similarly to nationwide indicators, as we are not a segregated professional group. According to a Hays Poland survey conducted at the end of 2019, less than half of the working population positively assessed their satisfaction with their jobs - 41 percent, 40 percent described their satisfaction level as medium, and 20 percent of respondents indicated a low or even very low level of satisfaction. In financial terms, 39 percent of working people in Poland are satisfied with their pay, compared with countries where the figure is the highest in Europe, at 63 percent in Denmark and 60.5 percent in Luxembourg. This lack of satisfaction is also due to the unfavorable change in the proportion of time spent, which has been observed over the past few years, with the gradual reduction of the most important conceptual phase in favor of the formal and bureaucratic handling of projects. Wading through a veritable thicket of incoherent laws and regulations, their various, and often opportunistic interpretation by the architecture and construction administration, means that it is no longer clear what the purpose of our profession is. Increasingly, it is more important for designers to obtain a building permit than the substantive and qualitative content of the project for which the permit is issued. Perhaps a result of this, albeit difficult to prove, is women's preference for smaller-scale, interior or design projects that do not require phantasmagorical struggles with authorities. Presumably, women, being more pragmatic and rational, find it a shame to waste their time and energy on the de facto sterile and pointless activity of struggling with offices.
Is it worth subscribing to this hardly constructive current of malcontent? Yes it is worth, and even necessary, and it is necessary to make every possible effort within the framework of our professional organizations to improve the conditions for the architectural profession. This is by no means about the narrowly conceived interests of our professional group. There is a simple, elementary relationship here. The quality of the architectural profession has a direct bearing on the quality of the space in which this activity is carried out. This quality must finally be of vital importance if we want to create a civilized and friendly space in which we want to live and pass it on to future generations.
