The Architect As Worker

The Architect as Worker

The Architect as Worker

Directly confronting the nature of contemporary architectural work, this book is the first to address a void at the heart of architectural discourse and thinking. For too long, architects have avoided questioning how the central aspects of architectural “practice” (professionalism, profit, technology, design, craft, and building) combine to characterize the work performed in the architectural office. Nor has there been a deeper evaluation of the unspoken and historically-determined myths that assign cultural, symbolic, and economic value to architectural labor. The Architect as Worker presents a range of essays exploring the issues central to architectural labor. These include questions about the nature of design work; immaterial and creative labor and how it gets categorized, spatialized, and monetized within architecture; the connection between parametrics and BIM and labor; theories of architectural work; architectural design as a cultural and economic condition; entrepreneurialism; and the possibility of ethical and rewarding architectural practice. The book is a call-to-arms, and its ultimate goal is to change the practice of architecture. It will strike a chord with architects, who will recognize the struggle of their profession; with students trying to understand the connections between work, value, and creative pleasure; and with academics and cultural theorists seeking to understand what grounds the discipline.

Architecture and Labor

Craft and Design: "Detail: The Subject of the Object" -- Architectural Work: "Work" -- Technology, BIM and New Work: "BIM and Parametricism" -- Architectural Production and Consumption: "Architectural Work in the Capitalist Context" -- Architectural Work: "Immaterial Labor" -- Antitrust Laws and Architectural Value: "The Sherman Antitrust Laws and the Profession of Architecture" -- Architectural Unionization: "The Missing Unions of Architectural Labor" -- Professionalism and the AIA: "Response to AIA Values" / with Keefer Dunn and Manuel Shvartzberg -- Other Nations' Professional Architectural Associations: "International Architectural Associations: Comparisons and Concerns" -- Architectural Contracts: "Contracts of Relations" -- Architectural Cooperativization: "Socializing Architecture Practice: From Small Firms to Cooperative Models of Organization" / with Aaron Cayer, Shawhin Roudbari, and Manuel Shvartzberg -- Beyond Architecture: "For an Architecture of Radical Democracy" / with Manuel Shvartzberg.