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Bernheimer Architecture union member notes the need for industry-wide change

2024-08-12T18:17:00-04:00

While the numbers are relatively small, these victories represent a massive shift in how designers see themselves: We went from being a privileged set of artisans to workers seeking solidarity with other workers in all industries. Learning from the workers and organizers who have put in the hard work before us, designers need to continue to take advantage of the current climate and organize more workplaces.

Chris Beck is an architect and member of the newly formed BA Union at New York-based Bernheimer Architecture, which recently ratified a collective bargaining agreement as the industry’s first union at a private-sector U.S. architecture firm.

Writing for The Progressive Magazine, he says their mission would be considered a failure if not moved successfully from their office and into others across the industry. As other attempts have failed controversially, Beck claims architects’ influence within the building industry has eroded and that "technology is completely dominant, strangling out the artistic skills fostered in the studio environment." Those criticisms echo many brought up in our coverage of Architectural Workers United and other labor groups.

The terms of the BA Union’s ratified contract have yet to be publicized, though they will undoubtedly serve as a primer for the ten or more union efforts thought to be underway currently as architectural workers take note. Less than 1...

Bernheimer Architecture union ratifies collective bargaining agreement, the industry's first

2024-07-26T14:01:00-04:00

The historic effort by staff at Bernheimer Architecture to form the industry’s first union at a private-sector U.S. architecture firm is now complete after their ratification of a collective bargaining agreement in the firm's New York office this week. The vote on Thursday was unanimous. Founder and 2023 AIA NY Medal of Honor recipient Andy Bernheimer is said to have worked openly with organizers to meet a mutual understanding on the contract, whose finalized terms are still forthcoming.

The process began in the summer of 2022 following the failed effort of workers at SHoP to form their own union, an episode that vaulted the conditions of architectural labor into the broader national media spotlight. The BA Union, as it is so-named, is part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), which has over 646,000 active members in the United States and Canada.

Groups such as Architectural Workers United are hailing its formal establishment as a major vic...

First architecture union formed by workers at New York firm Bernheimer Architecture

2022-09-01T10:40:00-04:00

Workers at New York firm Bernheimer Architecture have formed the first functioning union at a private-sector architecture firm in the United States. The workers group, collectively known as BA Union, will join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), as first reported by The New York Times.

The firm, led by Andrew Bernheimer, has chosen to recognize the union voluntarily, which avoided the need for a secret ballot election to be held in coordination with the NLRB, a procedure which we explained in our recent feature article on the subject. Bernheimer has also been publicly supportive of the union’s formation at his 22-person firm.

"We know that architecture is a discipline and profession that has a legacy of exploitation," Bernheimer told The New York Times. "I am of the opinion that one possible way for things to improve is for educators and professionals to show that they value the people who make all of our architecture happen."

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Michael Kimmelman on some newer rays of light in NYC’s public housing stock

2022-02-07T11:59:00-05:00

Writing about Twin Parks in 1973, The Times’s former architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, speculated that the project might “turn out to be important in the history of housing design.” [...] design, however compassionate, can mean only so much against the obstacles that make up the housing problem today.” The calculus is the same half a century later. But the South Bronx isn’t. Gradually, it has been remade. Progress isn’t impossible, it’s a process.

Both observed South Bronx developments, 1490 Southern Boulevard and a transformation of the Lambert Houses, are seen as examples of high-quality and effective public housing that offers residents more than just desultory amenities. The Times critic broke down the new-ish developments by Dattner and Bernheimer Architects by first cautioning us with a history lesson about nearby Twin Parks (which Paul Goldberger predicted might “turn out to be important in the history of housing design” at its opening in 1973), adding that, in his view, the pair offer “templates for redoing” many of NYCHA’s 302 other campuses.

“It’s an 18-story building with 163 permanently affordable units and a doorman. The boxy, drab exterior, set a few steps up and back from the street wall, looks almost belligerently banal. But inside the building is comfortable, luxurious even, compared with the deteriorating apartments and hallways I saw in the old buildings. Crucial to the conversion, no tenants are being dis...

Fairy Tale Architecture: The Butterfly Dream

2018-12-20T12:08:00-05:00

Fairy tales have transfixed readers for thousands of years, and for many reasons; one of the most compelling is the promise of a magical home. How many architects, young and old, have been inspired by a hero or heroine who must imagine new realms and new spaces — new ways of being in this strange world? Houses in fairy tales are never just houses; they always contain secrets and dreams.

"The Butterfly Dream" by Bernheimer Architecture is the third and final installment of this year's Fairy Tale Architecture series, curated by writer Kate Bernheimer and architect Andrew Bernheimer. ⠀

The team imagined the butterfly in Zhuangzi's famous parable as a drone, collecting data which can be abstracted to explore the transformation of things. The drawings of this story consist of data from the flight of the drone. These data were converted into a flight path, and then a flight-space. This space was then extruded into shapes and volumes, illustrating both the act of flying as well as the act of (detached, remote) seeing.

Fairy Tale Architecture: Little Red Riding Hood

2018-12-20T11:08:00-05:00

Just as ‘girl, wolf, woods’ signals Little Red Riding Hood, ‘gable, lintel, square cutout, arc’ signals Robert Venturi’s Mother’s House.⠀

In the second installment of our holiday series on fairy tale architecture, Mary English and Xavier Vendrell of Rural Studio present a playful take on Little Red Riding Hood, inspired by Robert Venturi's Mother's House.

"The story has three elements: Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf, and the house. The image of Little Red Riding Hood is iconic; any image of a wolf is iconic; so the house needed to be an iconic house," they explain. "It had to be a house that anyone would recognize as a house. In a way, the Venturi house is a house that a kid can draw, with the roof form and the chimney. And any adult will understand it is a house, but it’s something more, and obviously an architect or a designer will have another level of reading."

Fairy Tale Architecture: The Death of Koschei the Deathless

2018-12-20T10:08:00-05:00

It was the theme of nesting that primarily fascinated us about the Koschei tale, as it corresponded with ideas of sectional nesting that we have exploited as an architectural technique for generating spatial intricacy - LTL Architects.

Our holiday series on fairy tale architecture returns this week with three new features, curated by writer Kate Bernheimer and architect Andrew Bernheimer. ⠀
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First up: in "The Death of Koschei the Deathless," LTL Architects examine the strange habits of a fearful man who sought to escape his death through an obsessive nesting of forms within forms and spaces within spaces. Their beautiful rendering of this very strange tale focuses on Koschei's buried reliquaries and how they function in space and in time. The madness and beauty seen in precise details help us access the hopes and fears encoded in the story. ⠀

New Fairy Tale Architecture in Places Journal

2016-12-22T16:46:00-05:00

How many architects, young and old, have been inspired by a hero or heroine who must imagine new realms and new spaces — new ways of being in this strange world? This project presents a line of flight into architecture as a fantastic, literary realm of becoming.

This week, our series on Fairy Tale Architecture returns with four new designs by Snøhetta, Ultramoderne, Smiljan Radić, and Bernheimer Architecture. Each one explores the relationship between the domestic structures of fairy tales and the imaginative realm of architecture. But don’t expect a light escape into fantasy. These fantastical worlds draw their power from engagement with the real.

Tiddalik the Frog, designed by Snøhetta

Flatland, designed by Ultramoderne

Gripho, designed by Smiljan Radić

The Seven Ravens, designed by Bernheimer Architecture

The House on Chicken Feet

2011-12-22T14:23:00-05:00

We were able to meet the Grimms’ strict design requirements by employing a slender tower design of vertical cylindrical stems that are joined by intermittent outrigger beams with a reinforced space at the very top for Rapunzel’s long captivity.

This week, Places has a holiday series on fairy tale architecture. Participating firms — Bernheimer Architecture, Leven Betts, and Guy Nordenson and Associates — have selected favorite tales and produced works exploring the intimate relationship between the domestic structures of fairy tales and the imaginative realm of architecture.

Baba Yaga's Hut, by Bernheimer Architecture

Jack's Beanstalk, by Leven Betts with Bret Quagliara

Rapunzel's Tower, by Guy Nordenson and Associates