Architecture is adopting AI tools faster than the regulatory, insurance, and contractual frameworks can adapt. My research on professional practice reform examines this gap — and the consequences for the people who design, build, and inhabit the built environment.

I chair the Practice and Practicalities Working Group within the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning’s AI in Architecture initiative (2025–2026), where I lead research on AI liability, professional indemnity, and the contractual frameworks governing AI-generated design documentation. This work builds on a decade of research into procurement reform, novated design-construct contracts, and the structural degradation of architectural professional practice.

With Dr A Lam Kim, I am developing a national survey instrument examining how AI is reshaping design pedagogy and professional practice education. A VBA-funded grant examines design-and-construct contracts and insurance risk where architects are absent from the project team.

As an ARBV examiner and AACA exam writer, I bring direct regulatory knowledge to this research. As a practising architect (FRAIA, Principal at Norman Day + Associates), I experience the conditions I study.

Key question: When AI generates a set of construction documents, who is the author of record? The answer matters for insurance, for regulation, and for the people who will live in the building.

Recent Events

Architectural Practice Educators Network

In 2026, I chaired the Work Integrated Learning session at the annual APEN symposium, where the conversation centred on how professional practice education prepares — or fails to prepare — graduates for an industry undergoing structural change.

The Future of Building: Procurement, Quality & Urban Equity (November 2023)

Co-organised with Peter Raisbeck, Paul Viney (FPPV Architecture), and Peter Lochert, and endorsed by the Association of Consulting Architects. Panellists Wayne Liddy, Wendy Poulton, Sarah Slattery, and Adam Kiekebosch, moderated by Norman Day, confronted the reality that procurement is a cultural problem, not just a contractual one — with direct consequences for urban liveability, public trust, and building safety. The Shergold Weir report remains largely unimplemented. The cladding crisis demonstrated what happens when short-term value management overrides long-term design accountability. Nothing about these conditions has materially changed.

Victoria’s Future Cities, Suburbs & Building Reforms (July 2023)

Peter Maddison (moderator), Peter Elliott, Michaela Lihou, and Tom Trevaskis on how policy, profession, and public outcomes collide in Victoria’s building reform landscape. The discussion was direct: architects, developers, and consultants are operating in a system that structurally marginalises the people best placed to ensure quality. The housing crisis has since made these questions more urgent, not less.

Related Research & Publications

Day, K., Raisbeck, P., Vaz Serra, P., Bates, D., & Greenham, P. (2024). The unintended consequences of novated design construct procurement and the impact on the education of graduate architects in Victoria. In Dewsbury, M. & Tanton, D. (Eds.), Architectural Science and User Experience: Sustainability and Health. ANZAScA.

Day, K., & Huppatz, D. (2022). Repositioning Architecture. Inflection: Journal of the Melbourne School of Design, 9, 86–94.

Raisbeck, P., & Day, K. (2016). Architectural specialisation and the death of architectural practice. In Daniel, L., Soebarto, V. (Eds.), 50th International Conference of the Architectural Science Association. ASA & University of Adelaide.