It looks like I'm some sort of renegade, but I'm actually not says Chris Williamson

RIBA president Chris Williamson explains how he's trying to make an impact despite limited power in this exclusive interview.

It's only been six months since Williamson became president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) but he has already generated multiple headlines, first for renouncing his architect title and then for his proposal for The Loop.

While he was still president elect, he was in the news over his defence of his studio's work on Neom, the controversial giga-project in Saudi Arabia.

"I try not to do anything half-hearted," he told Dezeen. "It looks as though I'm acting alone as some sort of renegade, but I'm actually not."

"I think people do appreciate that I'm trying to do the right thing and I'm doing it to try and show what an architect can do."

"From time to time you need to be bold"

After initially being concerned he may not be able to make an impact in his presidency, Williamson got the idea to give up his architect title after presenting a group of students with their Part 3 certificates.

"For the first two or three months, I was going home thinking, 'two years is going to fly by and I'm not really making any difference'," he said.

"I was giving out 300 certificates to Part 3 students and having to explain to their parents that you can't call yourself an architect unless you pay the subscription fee to ARB [the Architects Registration Board] and it just seemed to be bonkers," he continued.

"And I just thought, this is something I can do something about."

To Williamson's surprise, when he suggested the idea of terminating his registration with ARB, and therefore no longer being able to use the title of architect, the RIBA was very supportive.

"To be honest, I was expecting everybody here at the RIBA to say, 'No, you can't do that, don't rock the boat, that's not the way we do things.' But surprisingly, they said, 'Yes, that's an interesting idea,'" he recalled.

"And before I knew it, they'd written a press release and there was no way I could back down, even if I wanted to."

Although resigning from the architects' register could be considered a stunt, Williamson believes that it has actually made a difference.

According to Williamson, the move has started a debate and pushed forward discussions between ARB and the RIBA about the regulation of architecture.

"From time to time, you need to be bold, and I'm in the position where I can do something about it," he said.

"It has brought people to the negotiating table and really started a debate about how are we going to do this, about particular functions that an architect does that need to be regulated."

While Williamson's decision to give up the title of architect has been widely praised, his proposal to link five countries with a high-speed railway line was less warmly received.

"When it comes to the resigning from ARB, 95 per cent of people have been really supportive, and I've had some really emotional, really moving emails saying this is the best thing a president's ever done," he said.

"I would say when it comes to The Loop, it's 50/50," he continued. "As always in social media, there's been people that have been pretty vindictive, and you just have to have a thick skin about that."

"Our lack of ambition is just astonishing"

Williamson said he proposed The Loop to demonstrate how architects can be ambitious.

The Loop would connect the English cities of Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool, with Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, Bangor in Wales, Dublin in Ireland and Belfast in Northern Ireland, with a high speed railway raised on stone viaducts.

"In the mid-19th century, we built 13,000 miles of railways in about 20 or 30 years and this proposal is for 1,000 kilometres," he explained. "And we can't even consider it, so our lack of ambition at the moment is just astonishing."

"I've been involved in infrastructure for 40 years," he continued. "I've seen what it can do, both on the Jubilee line helping to regenerate the East End and more recently the Elizabeth line, and also abroad as well."

Williamson explained how he was looking at some of the huge projects planned in other countries, including Saudi Arabia, and was impressed by their ambition.

"I've got so much criticism for working in Saudi Arabia, but those countries now are doing the things that we used to do, and I just wanted to try and harness the level of enthusiasm that engineers have for doing infrastructure works," he said.

"All the architects that I admire – Cedric Price, Archigram and Will Alsop – they all had ideas and not all of them were practical, but some of them got somewhere," he continued.

"And when Steve Jobs wanted to invent the iPhone he didn't know how it was going to work, but he knew what he wanted to do. So it's that sort of thing that I was trying to get at with The Loop."

Asked if British people's enthusiasm for high-speed rail had been dented by the troubled HS2 project, Williamson argued that setbacks shouldn't entirely dampen enthusiasm for ambitious projects.

"Just because you get something wrong doesn't mean to say everything you're going to do is wrong," he said.

"Look at what we did do – the Channel Tunnel, that was a great success. Even [Isambard Kingdom] Brunel went bust a couple of times, and a lot of the railway companies went bust, but it didn't stop them from doing amazing things."

"I don't have any power whatsoever as the president"

Williamson acknowledges that RIBA presidents have often found it tough to make meaningful change. Presidents only hold the position for two years, and the position is largely ceremonial.

"Change is very difficult to enact in two years, so yeah, you have to hope that you're part of the change, rather than the change itself," he said. "But I am quite an impatient person."

Effecting change requires working constructively with permanent senior members of staff at the RIBA who control the membership body's budgets, he added.

"There is a bit of a dilemma that the president is only here for two years, and the executive is here for a lot longer, so I have to work with them, but that's something that I'm used to," said Williamson.

"I have to convince them that these are the right things to do, otherwise nothing would get done," he continued. "I don't have any power whatsoever as the president, I don't have a budget, the only people with any power to get anything done is the executive."

Overall, Williamson hopes that he will be able to inspire young architects during his presidency.

"What I want to do, if I was totally honest, is pick my olives in Spain, but I feel like I'm not ready to retire yet, and there's so much I want to do to try and give young architects the same encouragement that I had when I was starting out," he said.

Williamson is the co-founder of UK studio Weston Williamson + Partners. He became president on the 1 September 2025, succeeding Muyiwa Oki.

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