Dezeen Wire: the latest report from Rotterdam research agency Arch-Vision shows that the construction industries in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands remain in decline, but that markets remain stable in France and the UK, and have improved in Germany.

Other recent reports show that workloads for U.S. architects have fallen sharply, but that UK architects has seen a significant increase in their workload.

See all Arch-Vision reports on Dezeen Wire.

Here's the full press release:

Dutch construction market still worsening, France and UK quite stable

In nearly all countries, the development of European architecture firms observed in Q4 2011 continued in Q1 2012.

The exception to this rule is France. No further decrease in the order book has been registered among the French architects this quarter. This is one of the conclusions of the Q1 2012 report of the European Architectural Barometer, a quarterly research among 1,200 architects in six European countries. European architects act as leading indicators for construction activity.

The latest European Architectural Barometer (Q1 2012) confirms most of the architects’ expectations from the previous quarter. The construction market in Spain and Italy is still most affected by the crisis. The Spanish and Italian architects continue to report decreasing order books and turnovers.

A slightly positive sign on the Spanish horizon is the share of architectural companies reporting that their order books increased by more than 5% in the last quarter. In comparison to Q1 2011 (the most positive quarter in Spain until now, where about 10% of the architects reported a growth of the order books by more than 5%), the group with a significant rise in the order book almost doubled in Q1 2012 (19%).

The situation in Italy is still deteriorating. For the second quarter in a row, about two thirds of the Italian architects report a declining order book and turnover. The outlook for the market is not positive either, and Arch-Vision expects the building volumes for Italy to be around 16% lower than in 2011 at the end of this year.

In Q3 2011, Arch-Vision reported that the Netherlands and France seemed to be reaching a second low point. The Q1 2012 results confirm this trend for the Netherlands, while no major changes in this quarter can be seen for France. In the UK, a small drop of the indicators has been registered, but in general the UK market remains stable at a slightly lower level than before the crisis and the forecast for 2012 is a drop in the building volumes of about 2%.

Germany remains the only country which has recovered and the order book development continues to show positive figures. As a result of the survey data and the market indicators used in the forecast model, the expected growth of 8% in the building volumes remains unchanged (as predicted in Q4 2011).

The table below presents the forecast of Arch-Vision for the building volumes in 2012 and 2013. The data for Q2 2012 is currently being gathered via telephone survey among architects in the 6 countries. The new results will be available in about four weeks time.

These and many other results and trends of the developments of the European construction market can be found in the European Architectural Barometer, an international research conducted among 1,200 architects in Europe. This study is conducted in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and the Netherlands by Arch-Vision four times a year.

Besides indicators to forecast European building volumes, a specific topic is highlighted each quarter. The topic in Q2 2012 is “Architectural Design & Technology trends” Architects can be used not only as a reliable source for future building volumes information, but their role is very important as they have great influence on how projects are built and which materials are used.