New Riba president Angela Brady used her inaugural speech in the role todescribe procurement of design as the "bane" of architects' lives.
Brady pledged to use her two year post to reform procurement, with atask-force already set up to push this aim forward. She also pledged to start aconversation with government, the profession and the public about how to kickstart development, and support the implementation of the government planningreform agenda.
Brady said: "As Riba President, I will campaign .to bring about reform of theprocurement system which is the bane of our professional lives. And I have atask force set up for this."
She also suggested that architects should be leading the debate on how torespond to the recent riots in England, by helping the creation of morecivilised environments.
Speaking to a packed crowd at the Riba head office in Portland Place tocelebrate her appointment, Brady said: "We architects have a huge responsibilityand a huge amount to give. The physical environment can often embody a postcode marginalisation. We have a disenfranchised youth, whose values lackleadership and aspiration, And very importantly, many of them live in a thirdrate physical environment, whose conditions are acknowledged by allpoliticians.
"As architects we are trained and experienced specialists. We can help inrebuilding communities and cities, in a far more visionary and realistic waythan any other sector."
Brady's speech followed another by outgoing Riba president Ruth Reed, inwhich she attacked the government for its built environment policies, accusingit of "attempting to destroy the economic future for architecture" by theintroduction of tuition fees for students.
She also hit out at architects who have responded to the recession by cuttingfee levels.
She said: "I had hoped that I was going to persuade the profession to reallyvalue itself and to begin to price itself accordingly. Instead I watched aslemming-like many practices slashed their fees in a suicide pact as bad as theearly nineties, chasing a diminishing workload.
"Not only did some practices try to destroy the economic future forarchitecture, the new coalition government did too, effectively pricingdiversity out of architectural education, making it the preserve of the rich orfool-hardy, denying us the talents of the rest.
"Capping it off with accusations that all along we had been creaming off cashfrom the school desks of the BSF programme."