I was watching BBC’ Unbuilt Britian recently (CLICK HERE FOR THE BBC UNBUILT BRITAIN SITE) which included an interview with Lord Norman Foster who gave a statistic that nine out of ten architects projects will never go ahead and get built.

In my experience the reasons for this can be numerous; especially financial reasons at the moment – unable to raise finance, building dependent upon selling and moving…. Other reasons have nothing to do with design; I written about this previously in ‘It’s not the design that will scupper your planning application’.

If you’re a budding, young architect it’s something to bear in mind; the drawings you’re toiling over may never see their constructed form. I remember this wake-up call in my first Part I job where I’d spent months working on a refurbishment and the developer changed his mind and the project was dumped.

As for my statistics, I did a quick tot and since I’ve been working in Ireland; the unbuilt projects are approximately 70%.

Better then the average but still heart-breaking.

It’s often said that architects wear black as they are in ‘mourning’ for the projects that didn’t make it.

Would love to hear from other architects with their ‘stats’…