The Greater London Authority is looking for architects to form a representative body in a new scheme formally announced by London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Monday.

The mayor’s Architecture + Urbanism Framework will debut next spring with a fifty-member panel taken from the design community that will work within a four-year timeframe with a slate of the GLA’s public sector development partners who can commission projects directly from the panel. The panel is a follow-up to ADUP 2, the second phase of a program launched in 2012 in order to “make it quicker and easier for organisations like councils and housing associations to commission high-quality consultants for certain types of projects.” 

It is also a part of Khan’s fifty-member Good Growth by Design program launched in 2017 to investigate the coming challenge of population growth to the city. Though some commentators in the UK have been critical of his development pursuits overall, the two-term mayor has a stated interest in incorporating design professionals into the city’s massive COVID recovery efforts and has been vocal in challenging the issue of diversity in the field and its extension into the public sphere.

ADUP 2 has likewise been successful in generating fees to the tune of around £70 million ($96.5 million). The body that will replace it will be a focus on representation in the procurement of public works projects. Architects’ Journal’s 2020 Race and Diversity Survey said minority architects were “hugely underrepresented" in a field made up of only 11% BAME practitioners. 

The deadline for applications is November 19th at 5:00 pm GMT. More information about applying to take part in the Framework can be found here.