Archinect - Features

Freelancing and Architecture: A Complicated Relationship

2024-05-23T14:49:00-04:00

For many salaried workers, freelancing and contracting may once have been a scary proposition, little more than placeholder labels as one moved between secure, salaried positions. However, the past decade has seen a notable increase in skilled workers and professionals becoming freelancers out of choice, with a unique skillset increasingly being capitalized upon by firms and businesses. Where do the architecture industry and its workers sit in this emerging landscape of the blended workforce?

10 Essential Skills for a Life Beyond Architecture

2017-03-24T12:00:00-04:00

The decision to study architecture feels like choosing a path for a lifetime at the age of 20. As you enter university, you think that architecture is about drawing and building as you get ready to become the next Mies van der Rohe. What you may not realize, though, is that architecture school also prepares you for many other careers out there.

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?