Archinect - News

Sydney Opera House builders reflect on historic job as the icon turns 50

2023-10-20T16:55:00-04:00

The construction of the Sydney Opera House was a famously fraught saga, but as the city’s landmark turns 50, former workers remember a quite different atmosphere on the site itself.

Trade unionists and other workers were not the only sources of labor disputes on the site, as Jørn Utzon memorably quit midway over a payment dispute on the 14-year construction project that became essentially the Brooklyn Bridge of the Southern Hemisphere when it finally opened on October 20, 1973.

A design known for its engineering breakthroughs, it also was historic in terms of the concessions made to workers, says Solidarity Online. Their execution of Utzon’s complex vision went over schedule and budget by ten years and $95 million dollars. The result, as Frank Gehry said, was “a building that changed the image of an entire country.”

“The work was precise. You can see it in the building today. Everything is perfect,” one worker told The Guardian. The BBC also has a retrospective look back in pictures here.

Snøhetta's U.S. office votes to not unionize

2023-07-07T16:40:00-04:00

With much anticipation, voting results for Snøhetta's U.S. employees and their fight for a union have come to a decision. After following Snøhetta's journey towards unionizing back in May and June of 2023, their efforts have fallen short.

Thanks to active report updates from New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber, final voting counts from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) resulted in a 35–29 final vote count against unionizing.

Image via @noamscheiber's Twitter account.

As reported merely a little over an hour ago (around 11:50 am PST), the possibility of things taking a turn for the better was mentioned after Scheiber reported the NLRB did not count 6 ballots from Snøhetta's San Francisco office. Prior to the most recent count update, the voting results posted earlier this morning reflected a 29–28 vote. However, after the remaining San Francisco ballots were taken into account, the results still remained unsuccessful.

The topic of fair labor within architecture firms a...

A dearth of BIPOC Boston-area construction workers reveals the industry's ugly 'caste system'

2022-08-03T15:26:00-04:00

The Boston population has grown increasingly diverse over the past few decades, with people of color accounting for more than half of the city's current residents and Black people making up 24% of all residents. But the city's construction workforce has not kept pace, according to Boston city data. The data also shows a kind of caste system in construction. The higher up you go in a building under construction, the less likely you are to find workers of color.

The Hub’s long history with racism is felt in practically every other area of the built environment in the city, including its underserved mass transit system and arcane zoning policy’s harsh afterburn. Workers on various large construction projects such as the new Winthrop Center are seeing the effects even as the industry faces labor shortages.

According to WBGH, Boston’s citywide construction workforce is 63% white, with instances of high-demand skilled roles registering at 88% and 89% white. Perhaps predictably, the data set showed some more dangerous job functions (such as asbestos removal) being staffed by upwards of 75% BIPOC laborers.

This is particularly worrisome as the city has been pushing equity mandates that require 40% BIPOC employment on all sites totaling more than 50,000 square feet. Women aren't fairing much better in the local workforce either: A fall survey of Boston's 150 biggest projects found none that met the same requirement, which calls for only 12% empl...

Construction Casualties: The Deadly Cost of Skyscrapers for Immigrant Laborers

2021-03-22T16:35:00-04:00

Across the United States, construction workers were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not to diminish the hardships and sacrifices of other essential workers and industries affected by the pandemic, Susannah Jacob of the Atlantic highlights the ongoing dangers and overshadowed accounts of construction laborers, specifically immigrant laborers.

Along with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, her piece "The Dark Side of America's Gleaming Skyscrapers" expands on working conditions and on-site casualties. "Immigrant laborers have been dying tragic, sometimes grisly deaths on construction sites across the country. These deaths rarely make news, but they tell the story of an industry indifferent to the lives of its workers."

Photo by Daria Sannikova from Pexels

Within her coverage, she recounts the stories of Eric Mendoza, Nelson Salinas, Gregory Echevarria, Juan Chonillo, Carlos Moncayo, and Mario Salas Vittorio. How their deaths, along with countless others, are examp...

Following a landmark decision, graduate students will now be able to unionize

2016-08-24T17:17:00-04:00

The National Labor Relations Board decided in favor of Columbia University graduate students and teaching assistants in a landmark case over their right to unionize. The decision will affect private universities nationwide and overturns a 2004 Brown University precedent, which asserted that students were not employees and therefore did not have the right to collectively bargain.

The decision was preceded by a long legal battle between the Graduate Workers at Columbia group and the university. The students complained about a lack of job and wage security, late paychecks, poor medical coverage, and a host of other issues. Columbia University argued that students "have a primarily academic relationship with the University and therefore are not employees."

h/t the Columbia Spectator

Interested in other labor-related issues? Check out these past articles:

Editor's Picks #309

2013-04-02T11:00:00-04:00

Archinect was excited to announce a competition we're co-hosting with Designer Pages and the LA Film Festival. This competition seeks proposals for the interior design/layout of the VIP Director's Lounge for this year's LA Film Festival. The winner will have their design executed, with a cash prize and an "Industry Badge" pass to the LA Film Festival in June. The winner's designs will also be on display in the director's lounge throughout the festival.

News
The Architect’s Journal reported that Denise Scott Brown has called for her role in Robert Venturi’s 1991 win to be acknowledged retrospectively as a salute to "the notion of joint creativity" and retrospectively acknowledge her role in Robert Venturi’s 1991 Pritzker Prize during an AJ Women in Architecture luncheon in late March. Since, nearly 2,000 advocates have passionately rallied in Brown’s support by signing an online petition created by Harvard’s GSD Woman in Design Group. Among the signatures include architects Zaha...