Archinect - News

Where the RIBA presidential candidates stand on key issues

2022-07-19T12:13:00-04:00

On July 26th, voting closes for the election of the next RIBA president. When the winner commences their two-year term as president on September 1st, 2023, they will be confronted with a list of burning issues across the UK’s architectural profession; and will be expected to publicly lead a response.

Some issues are specific to the UK context: a turbulent national political landscape, the soaring cost of indemnity insurance, and the implementation of new or upcoming UK laws on planning, construction, and emissions, to name a few. Other issues are specific to RIBA itself: an institution which has seemingly lurched from crisis to crisis in recent times, be it on accusations of inadequate diversity, election rule changes, or just this week, questions over a “buried” internal report on bullying.

These UK-specific issues aside, many of the challenges facing the UK professi...

A UK design firm is in hot water after posting an ad for an unpaid Part II architecture graduate

2022-02-27T13:04:00-05:00

The job ad, posted by design company Zulufish, sought Part 1 and 2 architecture graduates ‘or equivalent’ to work full-time for up to four months without salary. The post was highlighted on social media by Future Architects Front (FAF), a campaign group seeking to end exploitation in architecture, which described it as showing ‘comical levels of exploitation’.

The firm later withdrew the posting after a current of social media backlash brought on by the organization in spite of its having received a “sickening”-ly high level of responses from applicants. The advertisement called for a full-time schedule in a placement that provided only £75 per week in travel expenses and other reimbursements.

Unpaid internships lasting more than four weeks are illegal but remain fairly commonplace around the country in spite of overwhelming public support for recent legislative efforts taken up by Parliament members.

FAF’s Charlie Edmonds criticized RIBA, which then shot back on the group's Twitter thread, for “doing nothing proactive” to address the “grey areas” of employment, adding that “demonstrates one of the many ways that employers can exploit architectural workers, particularly recent graduates desperate for their first professional opportunity.’

Unpaid internships 'deepen existing barriers' for emerging architects, says NCARB

2021-10-19T13:24:00-04:00

The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) has released a statement reaffirming its opposition to unpaid internships in architecture as well as offering advice for how firms and students can help combat the issue.

Under NCARB’s licensure rules, employers are required to compensate all students and licensure candidates for their work, regardless of duration or experience level. NCARB’s AXP Guidelines also state that “unpaid internships are not eligible to earn experience hours” with exceptions made for certain experiences garnered outside of architecture firms.

More broadly, the 1938 U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act demands that interns be paid at least the minimum wage, apart from a handful of exceptional circumstances including work shadowing, education, and an absence of financial benefit to the employer from the intern’s work.

“We believe that all e...

Architecture Lobby expresses solidarity with UK’s architectural assistants

2021-03-24T19:28:00-04:00

The Architecture Lobby, an organization familiar to most of our readers, dedicated to elevating the value of architecture and architectural work, has shared with us a letter they penned in support of the Future Architects Fronts’ open letter to RIBA.

The Future Architects Front is a UK-based campaign that fights to end the exploitation of the next generation of architects. Their letter to the Royal Institute of British Architects has been signed by over 850 "architectural assistants," a UK-specific job title similar to an intern in the US, representing an architectural student or graduate with limited practical experience.

The letter describes the problematic path the licensure/qualification, an issue American architects can surely relate to, and includes the results from a survey they conducted in December 2020. The letter outlines a reasonable list of expectations, including, but not limited to, an end to unpaid overtime, more oversight on the job role, and greater transparen...

Junya Ishigami's lecture at MIT cancelled following revelations of unpaid internships at his eponymous firm

2019-04-24T18:03:00-04:00

A lecture at MIT that was to be given by the Japanese architect Junya Ishigami has been cancelled following revelations that Ishigami's Tokyo-based studio was relying on unpaid interns—a controversy that has prompted wide discussion and raised questions over the value of labor in architecture.

Students and faculty at MIT were hoping his lecture could become an opportunity to engage with these issues, asking his office if they could host a separate discussion on labor practices during his visit. However, the firm declined to participate while also requesting a guarantee for no Q&A and a restriction of discussion on the issue.

After news that the 44-year-old was selected to design the 2019 Serpentine Pavilion, an email from Junya Ishigami+Associates listing conditions for an intern was made public by Adam Nathaniel Furman. Causing an uproar, the terms set out in the e-mail showed that the firm expected young architects to work 13-hour days, six days a week for free; supply their own...

2019 Serpentine Pavilion architect Junya Ishigami draws criticism for unpaid internships in Japan

2019-03-22T16:01:00-04:00

A few weeks after being commissioned to design the 2019 Serpentine Pavilion, Junya Ishigami + Associates and the Serpentine Galleries are now under fire after it emerged that the big-name firm uses unpaid interns in Japan, the Architects' Journal reported today.

An email sent by Junya Ishigami + Associates in response to a student seeking an internship opportunity lists a set of “conditions”, which include unpaid interns having to provide their own software and computer equipment, and working Monday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to midnight for a period of at least 8-12 weeks. Artist/designer Adam Nathaniel Furman tweeted a screenshot of the email last week...

Though controversial in the UK, unpaid internships are still common practice in Japan. Before opening his own practice, Ishigami worked for SANAA — who has also been criticized in the past for not paying their interns — until 2004.

According to the Architects' Journal, the Serpentine Gallery said “it was not aware the practice used ...

Race for the Prize – Aravena's Pritzker ceremony, the scourge of unpaid internships and more on Archinect Sessions #59

2016-04-07T17:17:00-04:00

Last week we witnessed the loss of Dame Zaha Hadid, one of architecture's most formidable and prolific talents. We'll be devoting a later podcast episode to remembering her and honoring her work. Until then, we'll continue catching you up with the most significant architecture news from the past week.

This episode we discuss Alejandro Aravena's Pritzker acceptance speech (and the designs he's giving away for free), how NASA is experimenting with inflatable space houses, how we "crave" public space, and Nicholas Korody joins us to discuss the cockroach of unpaid architecture internships (they just won't die).

Listen to episode 59 of Archinect Sessions, "Race for the Prize":

iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscribe" button below the logo to automatically download new episodes.
Apple Podcast App (iOS): click here to subscribe
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AIA speaks out against unpaid internships in new emerging professionals campaign

2015-08-07T15:51:00-04:00

The Center for Emerging Professionals introduces a campaign dedicated to informing all generations of architects about the value Emerging Professionals bring to the field and the importance of getting paid for internship hours.

Responding to ongoing debates regarding unpaid internships and the devaluing of the profession, the AIA has launched a new educational campaign called "Know Your Worth", to inform and publicize how architects should value themselves in today's profession.

In a pair of videos introducing the campaign, architects at SmithGroupJJR (Los Angeles), McGraw Bagnoli Architects (Washington, DC) and Klimatic Architecture (Washington, DC) discuss the value of young and emerging professionals to the profession, and perhaps most importantly, present an unflinching view on unpaid internships – just don't do it. "If someone is in a situation where they're needing to argue about whether or not they should be paid, my advice would be to walk away from the situation," said Laura Ondrich, Architect at SmithGroupJJR, in below's "Value Your Work" video by the AIA.

Emerging professionals deserve compensation because they provide a unique and integral addition to firms: "Every new class of interns does bring...

Employers Have Greater Leeway on Unpaid Internships, Court Rules

2015-07-03T11:37:00-04:00

Employers have considerable leeway to use unpaid interns legally when the work serves an educational purpose...

Writing for a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge John M. Walker Jr. held that the Labor Department’s criteria were both out of date and not binding on federal courts.

He argued that the proper way to determine workers’ status was to apply a “primary beneficiary test” — a concept proposed by Fox in which the worker can be considered an employee only if the employer benefits more from the relationship than the intern.

Judge Walker wrote that he and his fellow judges on the panel “agree with defendants that the proper question is whether the intern or the employer is the primary beneficiary of the relationship.”

He further argued that the test should hinge largely on the internship’s educational benefits: for example, whether the internship was tied to the intern’s formal schooling and whether it occurred in an educational setting.

Sydney architecture intern underpaid almost $7000

2015-03-18T15:49:00-04:00

A student was underpaid almost $7000 during an internship with a Sydney firm of architects, a Fair Work Ombudsman investigation has found. The student was completing a masters degree in architecture when he was paid $12 per hour for six months of full-time work. His duties included architectural drawing, consulting with clients and and conducting site visits...the student, aged in his 20s,... was short-changed $6830.

According to Australian labor laws, the student was performing work that was not part of his architectural education and should have received minimum wage payment. Australia's minimum wage is $16.88 (in comparison, the US minimum wage is currently $7.25/hr) and after the student's graduation his payment should have risen to $21.19 an hour.

This news is the latest in a gathering storm surrounding the abuse of intern labor in architecture and other fields. For example, former interns at the publisher Condé Nast recently won a lawsuit against the firm, collecting a total of $5.8 million for unpaid labor (divided among 7,500 people).

The issue is part of a larger, systematic problem that inhibits young people at the nascence of their careers. In conjunction with the massive loans need to get educated, un- and underpaid internships are an impossible burden to shoulder for many aspiring architects, yet are often presented as a normal and necessary aspect of getting into the profession. For...

Employers Should Pay Their Interns. Here's Why

2014-06-10T20:24:00-04:00

Proponents of unpaid internships say the jobs help aspiring professionals get on-site experience and résumé entries that can spur their careers. Detractors insist that unpaid positions exploit workers, take jobs from would be entry-level employees, favor the privileged who can afford to make no money, and perhaps most importantly, break longstanding labor laws... employment defense lawyers are increasingly advising clients to start paying interns at least the minimum wage...

The 67-year-old Supreme Court case used to justify unpaid internships

2014-05-16T12:42:00-04:00

... the Labor Department established a six-point test for circumstances in which aspiring workers in need of skills, like trainees and interns, don't have to be paid. Must be similar to training you'd get at a school Must be for the intern's benefit Must not take the place of other, paid, employees Must provide the employer "no immediate advantage" Must not necessarily be entitled a job after the internship Must be understood by both the employer and intern to be unpaid

Why the unpaid internship may be on its way out

2014-05-05T18:27:00-04:00

“Any time you post an ad for an unpaid internship, you’re writing ‘Poor people need not apply’ in big letters at the top,” says Mikey Franklin, founder of the Fair Pay Campaign to end unpaid internships. If the fairness argument hasn’t been persuasive, the threat of lawsuits has been. Magazine publisher Condé Nast just settled a suit brought by some of its former unpaid interns. Rather than start paying, the company shut down its internship program altogether.

Previously

For Interns, All Work and No Payoff

2014-02-17T17:50:00-05:00

Call them members of the permanent intern underclass: educated members of the millennial generation who are locked out of the traditional career ladder and are having to settle for two, three and sometimes more internships after graduating college, all with no end in sight.

Editor's Picks #337

2013-10-14T23:46:00-04:00

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg, Editorial Manager for Archinect, traveled to Aedes Network Campus Berlin as a fly-on-the-wall, and reported back with 7 Lessons from the 3rd International Architectural Education Summit. These were; 1) The relevancy of the “Architect” is fleeting, 2) Kids today don’t know a thing about radicalism, 3) The powers that be are male, and architecture is a gender-divisive practice, 4) Architects need to be “strategically naive”, 5) Architectural authority is not above democratic authority (?), 6) Form before finances and lastly 7) The student has become the master (at least regarding computers).

In response Thayer-D opined "The main problem with architectural education isn't the lack of branding or radicalism, or even male dominated pedagogy (although that does suck). It's the lack of faith that tackling the myriad of issues associated with any given project will result in the most compelling and present project possible, regardless of one's aesthetic proclivi...

ProPublica is investigating interships, and is seeking your feedback

2013-05-07T18:49:00-04:00

In April 2010, the Department of Labor released a six-point test to help determine whether an internship in the for-profit sector qualifies to be unpaid under federal law. One of the key criteria is that the position must be of more benefit to the intern than of benefit to the company. Companies can’t just use interns to replace regular employees.

Click here to take their internship survey.

Editor's Picks #296- Happy (Gregorian or Julian calendar) New Year's Day!

2013-01-02T01:22:00-05:00

fschlem started a blog The Dirty South...The blog takes it name from a studio titled the "Dirty South," offered at the Georgia Tech. The studio was the brainchild of TVSDesign Distinguished Studio Critic Jennifer Bonner and it’s goal was to look at the city of Atlanta through the filter of the rap ideology of east coast/ west coast/ dirty south, translated to the realm of architecture...Connely Farr thought "wow. really interesting idea for a studio..."

Just like last year, Archinect has begun the transition into the new year by reflecting back on the 2012 by sharing the most trafficked pages in Archinect's diverse online ecosystem, with a list of 12 top 12 lists for '12. As always, they listing the most popular pages from across the site, based exclusively on visits by unique page-views. Released so far are the 12 most visited News posts and 12 most visited Feature articles during 2012.

Tomorrow the 12 top 12 BLOGS,BLOG POSTS and LIVE BLOGS will be announced.

News
Michael Kimmelman reviewed the new Stedelijk Museum and reflecting on it’s design asked "Why a tub?" Thayer-D offered up a few guesses but then gave up and replied "Why IS this museum shaped like a tub?". Orhan Ayyüce added "Building aside, it is a good museum with an excellent director, Ann Goldstein, who was a great curator here in Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art since the 80's. She is one of the best curators anywhere when it comes to conceptual art. Sh...

Exploitation of Interns Coming to an End?

2012-12-27T13:17:00-05:00

Unpaid interns are common in architecture firms, but recent lawsuits brought by interns across other industries may have the architecture industry forking out some cash. In many industries, the term ‘intern’ is often used to describe someone who works for no pay, but the NCARB’s IDP has been trying to detach interns from the assumption by architecture firms that they are willing to work for free. The council defines architectural internships as post-graduate, pre-registration professional work.

Work Is Work: Why Free Internships Are Immoral

2012-05-17T23:07:00-04:00

Estimates put the number of unpaid interns every year between 500,000 and one million. So, in a country where working for free is mostly illegal, a student population somewhere between the size of Tucson and Dallas will be working for free, in plain view.

A 100-Intern Poll

2012-03-28T00:30:00-04:00

An intern-rights movement is afoot, sparking class-action suits against Hearst and Fox Searchlight; rumors of new rules at Condé Nast; a Times “Ethicist” column (headline: “The Internship Rip-Off”); and a book (Intern Nation) decrying many of the unpaid jobs as boondoggles. Amid the uprising, our interns surveyed 100 other New York interns about the apprentice’s life.

A fairly informal poll was conducted by NY Mag near the campuses of NYU, Columbia, and FIT in NYC. While the results are not that surprising, some are worth noting:

72% report getting paid nothing
4% report getting paid over minimum wage
41% indicate that they would like to continue working for the same employer after internship is complete
56% do not believe they are being exploited by low (or no) pay

Click here to view the full-size infographic.

Interns File Suit Against ‘Black Swan’ Producer

2011-09-29T17:44:25-04:00

Two men who worked on the hit movie “Black Swan” have mounted an unusual challenge to the film industry’s widely accepted practice of unpaid internships by filing a lawsuit on Wednesday asserting that the production company had violated minimum wage and overtime laws by hiring dozens of such interns.

The GOOD Guide to Hustlin': How To Know if Your Internship is Worth It

2011-09-14T18:14:57-04:00

Internships are pretty sweet deals for employers, especially during a recession that’s forced them to lay off thousands of workers. They get to cull from a pile of résumés from increasingly qualified and well-rounded students and graduates to choose interns to come work at their company for free for two, four, or six months. Where interns may have once been confined to the coffeemaker, post-grad interns may now find themselves overworked...

They Do It for Free! The Inner Lives of Interns

2011-05-23T16:11:47-04:00

Certainly, internships can provide the relevant job experience employers look for when making hires, and they give career hopefuls the chance to make industry contacts. The problem, of course, is that only the privileged tend to have the means (i.e., parental support) to pursue them without going into debt, putting those who can get by on nothing in the short run at a long-term advantage.

Unpaid Interns, Complicit Colleges

2011-04-03T18:29:56-04:00

ON college campuses, the annual race for summer internships, many of them unpaid, is well under way. But instead of steering students toward the best opportunities and encouraging them to value their work, many institutions of higher learning are complicit in helping companies skirt a nebulous area of labor law.