Archinect - Features

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.

Burnout, and the Architecture Work Culture

2019-07-02T12:00:00-04:00

How many stories have we heard of the extreme working conditions in our industry? Starting from school, "all-nighters" become an inevitable part of our participation as students. It's our ticket to the club. A simple Google search reveals that architecture students are one of the hardest working majors, spending the most hours per week on coursework. And it doesn't stop with school. Naturally, this culture bleeds into the workplace. The experienced reader has probably found themselves, late one night, well past the end of the day, at the office working on something for a client. We vow to get the work done at all costs. But what costs are those really? Our health, wealth, and happiness? Is it really worth it?

Based in New Haven, Gray Organschi Architecture Creates a Working Environment for Critical Engagement with Architecture

2019-01-21T10:00:00-05:00

Over the past few years, the field has received a growing amount of attention that has highlighted long standing labor issues within the architecture industry, ranging from unsustainable pay models to unwelcoming work environments. Looking for an alternative, the Architecture Lobby created the Just Design Initiative, which recognizes fair labor practices in architecture. Beginning with nominations submitted by employees, and followed by an evaluation process, the team looked at practices that can serve as models of a new status quo within the profession. Archinect has teamed up with the Just Design crew to profile firms across the country that meet the initiative's standards. Whether it is a family-friendly work schedule or a health coverage plan that goes above and beyond, the series spotlights practices that honor the basic rights of their employees and can serve as exemplary models of what should become standard for the field.

At McMillan Pazdan Smith, Great Culture Produces Great Work

2019-01-08T14:05:00-05:00

How Aamodt/Plumb Architects is Bringing the Slow Movement to Architecture

2018-12-17T14:49:00-05:00

How Elizabeth Eason Architecture Achieves Work-Life Balance

2018-12-10T12:13:00-05:00

Over the past few years, the field has received a growing amount of attention that has highlighted longstanding labor issues within the architecture industry, ranging from unsustainable pay models to unwelcoming work environments. That’s why it is “more urgent than ever,” says Peggy Deamer (who started the Architecture Lobby to tackle such issues), that “we have a system that highlights labor matters, that fights for fairness and not management.”

Looking for an alternative, the group created the Just Design Initiative, which recognizes fair labor practices in architecture. Beginning with nominations submitted by employees, and followed by an evaluation process, the team looked at practices that can serve as models of a new status quo within the profession. Archinect has teamed up with the Just Design crew to profile firms across the country that meet the initiative's standards. Whether it is a family-friendly work schedule or a health coverage plan that goes above and beyond, the se...

Screen/Print #66: Hans Hollein's Mobile Office and the New Workers’ Reality

2018-04-05T09:00:00-04:00

In 1969, decades before winning the Pritzker Prize, Austrian architect Hans Hollein built an inflatable mobile office that could be carried around and set up practically anywhere. Prophesying what would later become a laptop, the project—part pneumatic architecture, part performance, part video art—involved Hollein landing a small airplane on a runway and setting up the portable, plastic space, in which he could be seen talking on the telephone and typing.

May Day: a Round-Up of Articles on Working Conditions and Labor in Architecture

2017-05-01T20:41:00-04:00

While most of us might be spending our May Day in the office, that doesn't mean we can't take the occasion to discuss issues surrounding working conditions in the field.

Who Builds Your Architecture? A Critical Field Guide

2017-03-17T11:53:00-04:00

Who Builds Your Architecture? (WBYA?) asks architects and allied fields to better understand how the production of buildings connects their design and consulting practices to the workers who ultimately build them. As a primer, the WBYA? Critical Field Guide introduces key terms, questions, case studies, and proposals that locate architecture within the complex transnational networks of contemporary building construction and connects it to the problems faced by construction workers who exist within the same system. It aims to shift the focus from how buildings are conceived by architects to how they are materialized by a broad network of people including architects, construction workers, and a host of other actors.

Student Works: Designing a Union for Freelancers

2017-03-03T12:48:00-05:00

Technological, political and economic transformations over the last few decades have radically changed the nature of work. Today, we can draw floor plans as easily from bed as from the office. And with the emergence of platforms such as Skwerl, the freelance economy looks like it could start to break up the centuries-old work structure of firms.

Can Skwerl Bring Architecture into the “On-Demand” Economy?

2017-02-23T12:15:00-05:00

Technologies, from computation to automation, have certainly and radically altered architecture. So have the economic transformations that accompanied their emergence as well as the concurrent financial crisis. But, in the era of mass disruptions, technological and otherwise, architecture has remained, in at least one way, largely unscathed. That is to say, the firm structure (for better and worse) persists while other industries have succumbed to an “on-demand economy” marked by flexible hours, scant job protection, and little-to-no employee benefits. Is that about to change?

Falling through the sharing economy's looking glass—and into an ocean of unpaid, gendered, domestic labor

2016-07-13T15:17:00-04:00

“Work, work, work, work, work, work,” instructs Rihanna as we drive through the mountain pass; her dancehall, reggae-pop anthem to staying on the grind despite poor returns on libidinal investment providing the tempo for my own frantic attempts to capture any last emails before I abandon the world of 3G for cacti, a meteor shower, and a cheap Airbnb.