In November 2016, the Executive Vice President and CEO, of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Robert Ivy, issued a statement congratulating President-elect Trump and the new Congress. Speaking for the organization’s 95,000 members, Ivy said they were “ready to work” with Trump to improve America’s infrastructure. Within liberal and progressive circles, the backlash was swift, given the divisive nature of Trump’s infrastructure plans, which included significant expansion of the southern border wall with Mexico and more coal power plants.
Ivy apologized, and this year, the AIA appointed a new President, the founder of Architecture is Fun, Peter Exley. Now that Biden’s Infrastructure plan, The American Jobs Plan, has been released, the AIA has once again issued a statement in support of business as usual. On April 1, the organization published a press release with the headline: “AIA applauds release of federal American Jobs Plan.”
Highlighting the proposal’s potential to provide “significant investments into America’s workforce, our nation’s infrastructure, climate action, and resilience,” the AIA statement notes the “significant opportunities for the architecture, engineering, and construction industry to advance sustainable design practices.” Very safe and remarkably similar to the 2016 statement by Ivy.
The
statement could have been an opportunity to highlight the difference
between the Trump plan and the Biden plan. It could have been an
opportunity to make a substantive statement on the role of
infrastructure. It could have been an opportunity to reflect on the
organization’s own complicity in supporting structural racism and
inequality—the way infrastructure, engineering, and architecture
have been used to divide American cities.
Architects are precisely the professionals who must understand the spatial and material nature of inequality
Many highways that need
repairing (or demolition) were constructed in order to reinforce the
deliberate segregation that politicians and bankers enacted with the
support of architects, planners, and builders. The statement could
have been an opportunity to encourage conversations about racism in
the notoriously conservative and white realm of architecture.
In
fact, Exley and Ivy did issue a
short statement on April 21,
the day after the white Minneapolis police officer Derrek Chauvin was
found guilty of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man.
Shortly
after, on May 3, Ivy announced that he was stepping down. In their
statement, the AIA was again cautiously saying that “This one act of
justice is an opportunity for reflection, and for some, provides a
sense of hope.” While the circumspect tone is typical for the AIA,
they missed the opportunity to draw connections between
infrastructure and structural racism.
Architects are precisely the professionals who must understand the spatial and material nature of inequality, rather than viewing infrastructure and racism as separate issues to be addressed with politically calculated, separate statements.
*Correction: An earlier version of this article mentioned Robert Ivy was the "Executive President and CEO" of the AIA. The article has been updated with his correct title, "Executive Vice President and CEO."
Dante is a PhD student studying the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. He is a licensed architect in New York State.
36 Comments
'structural racism' is an elite buzzphrase that doesn't have any meaning other than to signal your status. To understand history you'd have to study the Islamic Caliphates that dominated the Middle Ages, African slave trading empires, Spanish and Portuguese history in Caribbean and Latin America, British, Holy Roman and US history to understand a bit of the cultural, economic and geographical clashes that are happening now. Elites are willing to impose a Chinese style cultural revolution in America in order to supposedly solve a problem rather than allow people and cultures to evolve freely over time.
"organization’s own complicity in supporting structural racism and inequality" ... when exactly did the AIA support structural racism? It seems like there's so much lazy generalizations going on today, it would help to cite specifics here rather than links to other stories about 'structural racism.' The highways built through inner cities wasn't a conspiracy to hurt certain people, it was a part of post-war decentralization and a logical response to the automobile. This conspiratorial mindset is destroying the fabric of free countries of the West.
This clown is the literal "first" when it comes to bigoted takes. Congrats.
Sorry you find reality bigoted. Maybe this world isnt for you.
I agree Chemex, to a point. There are however neighborhoods in the US that are still burdened by intentional or negligent infrastructural decisions that were made in the not too distant past. If you want to find a black or Latino community, just find the local airport and look at the neighborhoods all around it. There is an unfair dumping of undesirable industries in proximity to minority communities
, a lack of infrastructure or neglected infrastructure (flint for example), and a
Overall lingering economic hindrance because of these things. This is not a coincidence. It’s racial sometimes and socioeconomic almost always (like coal mines and all). We should correct these things imo. If my taxes go to anything, I’d much rather them go to something like fixing flints water system than another battleship or corporate subsidies
What’s preventing the non-woke possessed from getting on board with these things is the unnecessary “cultural revolution” rhetoric that comes with it...mostly parroted by useful idiots...but sometimes by more nefarious characters
Nobody is arguing there are no problems or racial issues in society. If you walk around any US city you find huge disparities. But study the new deal era planning that led to the current paradigm, you will find countless officials trying to fix the crime-ridden, dirty, congested city — not on a racial basis but a economic one. They designed the greater middle class wealth device, the suburbs, but the poor and recent immigrants (hated most by the KKK) of that era got frozen into place — Irish, Asians, Italians, Blacks, Jews, Catholics. Even many of these moved up the latter into mid-city housing that’s now valuable. Then came drugs in the 80s that messed up many inner city communities.
The point is, American cities have unique issues because every other country are either mono-racial or exterminated all the others. Every Marxist Revolution leads to mass extermination, not the humanism and freedom that makes even the poorest here better off than most other countries. If we don’t understand history, we will never make things better. This is just a ploy for power
Just look at the Blackrock fiasco. A many trillion dollar property company that is buying up middle class real estate is being cheered on by the racecraft people instead of facing a progressive + conservative backlash. Race hucksters are really just wall st Union breakers in disguise
Every decade architecture takes on a new superficial veneer to make boring buildings sparkle...race washing is the new green washing...
The AIA is part of society and unfortunately is struggling with the same problems as the general society;
https://www.architecturalrecor...
What policies of the AIA, or the field of architecture in general, are systemically racist? What aspects of the system are racist? Let's get specific.
Prisons.
Serious question: If there is systemic racism in the criminal justice system, are architects complicit in it if they design prisons?
It's not a serious question.
It is a serious question. Do you think we should not have prisons? Are the prisons themselves the problem, or is the problem within the administration of the prisons?
Architects don’t design prisons. It’s just a narrative peddled by the systemic race racket
Again with the lies. Architects do design prisons, I worked for a firm that did.
of course the woke warrior worked at a prison firm, probably at some bottom feeding arch/engineering place. No wonder you hate yourself. Don’t take it out on the majority of architects that chose not to. Let’s just focus on the bad people like yourself that perpetuate racism.
Three things, bigot;
Worked is past tense, and by I worked there, it was for all of six months.
Having looked into a paper done by grad student, I accepted the challenge posed in the paper, doing nothing contributes to bad design and horrible outcomes.
The parties at my interview did not give up the ghost so to speak, which means they did not come across as biased, heartless people, caring nothing about the human condition.
That last one was it for me, no amount of my good intentions was ever going to overcome their anti-human attitudes.
It bothers me to no end that architects in the educational discourse and commentariat seem to have no idea what actual architects are and aren't responsible for. Like do they not know that architects work for people? We don't just get to decree the order of how things are in the world, especially when it comes to infrastructure. We certainly can exercise good design judgment to the degree that we can, but this notion that an architect is going to bring about a change in racism structural or otherwise, when we can't even get clients to pay us on time for the actual work we're doing is naive and foolish. Trying to get something approved by a plan checker at the city is often a Herculean task in and of itself.
Unfortunately infrastructure projects are often not even designed by architecture firms but handled by E or EC firms like Skanska, Bechtel or AECOM (i.e. companies where good design is not necessarily their highest priority). Maybe occasionally a stakeholder might have the wherewithal to bring on Sasaki or some other master planner but that can't be counted on. Overseas in a place like Saudi Arabia a firm like Foster & Partners might be able to get a subway project here and there but infrastructure projects in the US don't tend to hire firms known for a solid track record of strong architectural design. Every once in a while an SOM or HOK might break through like with Moynihan Station.
Certainly architects who work for the government can exercise good design principles, but we have a serious set of constraints including being able to qualify for the job in the first place. US and state Government RFPs tend to focus on whether or not you have experience with this type of project not whether or not your ideas for solving the world's problems vis-a-vis the built environment are sound. An architect just can't declare (as they're apt to do in architectural discourse in Europe) that only public housing is the appropriate response to the housing crisis, for example, or that if a freeway cuts through a neighborhood, as they are almost certain to do, that it is a priori the result of racism or some sort of inequality. Most of the time infrastructure projects have to respond to prevailing conditions or take the path of least resistance, and unfortunately the people who historically have not had the political firepower to block or veto projects have been those in less fortunate neighborhoods. But that's not on architects, its on cities, and developers and planning commissions to figure that out or stand up to the moneyed interests who block the right thing from being done.
Subways are probably the least intrusive and perhaps most inclusive form of public transportation there is and Beverly Hills fought tooth and nail to keep them nowhere near there, so this isn't necessarily an architecture problem. In fact architects would be the last place I'd look if I had to point fingers for why things are the way they are because often by the time an architect gets involved the big, city defining decisions have been made by the stakeholders. Half the time the sites are selected long before an architect is even commissioned. I think this notion to elevate architects to being the keepers and guardians of the built environment is naive to what responsibility we actually have. Maybe it would be nice if the world looked to us for that but it doesn't, we're just seen as a means to and end. If architects had also historically been developers, then maybe there'd be something there to an argument about our responsibility but we're hired hands. That being said I do thing architects can make things worse. The infatuation with Corbusian planning led to the housing projects of the 1950s and 60s and that did not go well. But again it would be hard to say Yamasaki or Herman Jessor were somehow consciously participating in structural racism so much as misguided in their design principals.
Dante-
You wrote: “While the circumspect tone is typical for the AIA, they missed the opportunity to draw connections between infrastructure and structural racism.“
What do you see as a connection between infrastructure and structural racism? This isn’t really specifically described in your article.
Lmgtfy?
I'm sure I could google and find all sorts of things. I was interested in what the author saw as the connection, since he called the AIA out for not addressing it.
And, I'm saying that maybe you write your article, and explain why the connection isn't so obvious.
I’m not saying saying it is, or it isn’t. I’m interested in understanding the author’s point of view.
It would seem that you completely missed the two paragraphs that directly connected the growth of highways, and their decimation of Black communities? Let me know if you need any further assistance.
The article asserts and assumes a connection, but no specifics are given.
What, you really need specifics? Really? How long of an article do you need? I can bring two in the city I live in. It's almost like you live in a fish bowl.
May I talk to someone else?
Oh, I get it, sure. Hold on, I'll get her for you.
Architects draw plans for buildings that others want, whatever their intentions. As much as we'd like to think we have the ability to directly affect justice with our work, we don't, because there'll always be someone else to take an unethical commission. History's wrongs should be righted, it just won't be by an architect's pen.
The greatest power an architect or landscape architect will ever have is to inspire awe. Like nature, the forces that bring about its beauty and form are disassociated from the effect it has on the observer / user. Through a pursuit of beauty we can transcend even the ugliest ingredients that went into its creation, that we often cannot control.
This is exactly right and very well said. If you are looking to do good with architecture, think about the observer/user first and the brief moment of respite or even awe your work might engender that will lift their spirit and send a 'tiny ripple of hope' outward .
Funny you use the word “ripple” because I was listening to this song just before I wrote that. https://m.youtube.com/watch?
v=QmMjY6tXaEo
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QmMjY6tXaEo
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