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...

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 Where does this effort, which was ultimately withdrawn, sit within the broader discourse of architectural labor conditions?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.

Cooperatives: The Real Employee-Owned Firms?

2022-05-06T09:00:00-04:00

In a follow-up to our January 2022 feature on employee-owned architecture firms, we question if the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) models which represent the majority of employee-owned architecture firms adequately fulfill a growing worker-led clamor for reform within the profession. For organizations such as the Architecture Lobby, and its founding member Peggy Deamer, meaningful worker ownership of an architectural firm goes far beyond the ESOP model of stock and retirement plans, and instead requires a fundamental rethink, or even abolition, of the employer-employee dynamic.

Is Twitter the architectural intern's unofficial labor union? Exposing the reality behind unpaid internships across borders and industries

2015-06-11T12:15:00-04:00

Social media has been accused of being many things: a time-waster, an intelligence-leveler, a privacy-invader. However, in the field of architectural employment, social media has oddly become a kind of virtual worker’s union, helping to expose unethical hiring practices. A recent leaked email from Japanese firm SANAA advertised an unpaid internship for three months consisting of 12-hour days, 6-7 days a week, with the intern providing his or her own computer and software. Juan Herrera tweeted the email on March 23rd and it quickly garnered extensive press coverage.