Archinect - Features

Organizing and Reforming Architectural Education: A Conversation With Tessa Forde

2024-11-06T11:49:00-05:00

In recent years, the word 'organizing' has taken on a heightened power in architectural discourse, most notably through grassroots efforts by architectural workers across the United States to organize for better workplace conditions.

For Tessa Forde, organizing centers on a vast network of relationships that transcends different scales, disciplines, and actors across and beyond the architectural profession. In particular, Forde sees architectural education as an arena in which organizing holds great potential, with positive benefits for educators, students, the profession, the public, and the planet.

In that spirit, Forde is one of seven co-authors of the new book The Organizer's Guide to Architecture Education, alongside Kirsten Day, Peggy Deamer, Andrea Dietz, Jessica Garcia Fritz, Palmyra Geraki, and Valérie Lechêne. In October 2024, Archinect's Niall Patrick Walsh spoke with Forde about the book and its underlying message. The conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity...

Creativity Won’t Protect Architects from Automation — But Labor Unions Might

2024-02-27T07:31:00-05:00

The proliferation of generative AI tools such as Midjourney and ChatGPT has undermined long-held assumptions that artificial intelligence would not threaten creative disciplines. In an effort to balance the opportunities and limits of artificial intelligence in the architecture studio, we ask what lessons architects can take from recent successful labor actions by screenwriters and actors in Hollywood's entertainment industry.

This article is part of the Archinect In-Depth: Artificial Intelligence series.

Unionization in Architecture: Reviving a Dormant Movement to Fix a Broken Industry

2022-05-27T12:50:00-04:00

After decades of inactivity, 2022 saw the resurgence of the union movement in architecture with an effort by workers at New York-based SHoP to collectively organize. Where does this effort, which was ultimately withdrawn, sit within the broader discourse of architectural labor conditions? How might unionization impact employer-employee dynamics, architectural fees, and the design process itself?

In search of answers, we speak with IAMAW union organizer, and former SHoP employee, Andrew Daley, who assisted in the unionization effort while at the firm. We also speak with Peggy Deamer, founding member of The Architecture Lobby, for whom the SHoP effort was the culmination of years of activism and campaigning for reform of what an increasing number of architects see as a broken business model.

For What It’s Worth: Unpaid Overtime Among Future Architects

2021-04-28T16:22:00-04:00

Over recent months, a conversation about unpaid overtime has risen to the top of the United Kingdom’s architectural discourse, spurred by lobbying from the Future Architects Front. We took a closer look at how the latest debate began, what it uncovered about the prevalence of unpaid overtime in architecture, and what it means for the future of unpaid overtime in the UK and abroad.