Guild of Architects
The Guild defending the interests of the city's building designers. An institution which hands out awards and prizes for innovative building design.
"Innovative", in this context, might come from the same lexicon as "daring" or "novel" to a career civil servant: it denotes "totally untried and untested, and we reserve judgement on how soon that flat roof is going to leak or those flimsy windows are going to fall out in a light breeze. Even though the building might end up as totally unfit for the purpose, by the time anyone notices we can put it down to normal structural deterioration. Or else we can make veiled suggestions that because the design was so new and innovative, the fault is really with the builders who put it up, or the buyer who uses the building. It's so radical a concept that they aren't able to look after it properly. Either way, it's not our fault if they persist in using it. In any case, anyone worrying about such petty things as whether or not the roof leaks on an award-winning building is self-evidently not a creative professional, and we don't need to waste any breath on non-creative garbage of that sort."
It is entirely possible that "Bloody Stupid" Johnson was a member.
The Guild of Architects Press are the publishers of The Edible Architecture of Bergholt Stuttley Johnson and The Guild Houses of Ankh-Morpork, both by Startup Nodder, FAMG, AitD, and probably The Guide to Impossible Buildings by W.H.J. Whittlbey, which suggests that if Death had any taste, his Domain would look very different, and proper architects would live longer.
Other prominent architects mentioned in the Discworld books
- the Ptaclusp family of Djelibeybi
- Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos
Buildings which actually have won major architectural awards in the Discworld and other books
- the Ankh-Morpork Mint
- the Joshua N'Clement building
- the High Energy Magic building at UU, where the flat roofs won special mention, and the windows have barely begun to let in water yet...