Author: roberta cucca
Co-Authors ⁄ Presenters: Maestripieri Lara
From protection to vulnerability. The power of organization between architects and consultants
The aim of this paper is to analyze the processesof change in the effects of the public regulation affecting professions in Italy, with a special focus on the situation of architects and consultants.
In this context, consultants deal with an unsettled environment, moving in a total lack of formal and public recognition, while their associations and lobbies seem not able to promote more supportive policies. Similarly, architects deal with the crisis of their Professional Order, due by the increase of intra-professional competition and the recent crisis of the building sector. As a consequence, professionals might losing their traditional forms of social inclusion and slightly entering a vulnerable status, since it’s not clear what type of social protection is replacing the traditional system of professions.
In this changing context, the paper, reporting the results of 45 interviews to architects and consultants in Italy, presents differences and similarities between the public regulation systems and the possible meeting of interests. The paper highlights the growing importance of professional organizations in defining both risks and both innovative forms of social protection: in a substantial absence of a public regulation, the search for an organizational structure might be acting as a new form of professionalism and an area of self-made preservation.