ABSTRACT
In theatre, tragedy is agreed to be a play in which the protagonist, usually a person of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through personal failing and circumstances with which they cannot deal. When defining professionalism in any discipline with its core supposedly grounded in an ethical position, it is tragedy one wishes to avert. Taking practice first, there is a perspective from the profession that attitudes to clients, end users and building production processes are formed in schools of architecture. This generally segues into concerns about graduate employability, a cipher for the commercial utility (or otherwise) of the graduate/emergent practitioner. It has been suggested that 'taking a historical view of the profession, it must be said that avoiding risk, and shuffling off responsibilities, has become something of a trademark.' If architects' professionalism is to be appropriately defined, one must start with the standards the profession sets for itself.
