On this episode, we're joined by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena. A long-familiar name to most of our listeners, Aravena’s work gained significant media attention upon winning the Pritzker Prize in 2016, elevating his reputation for working to address some of today’s most difficult issues through participatory design, engaging users, groups, experts, and the public-at-large. His most notable projects are his “incremental housing” developments, a partially subsidized low-income solution for displaced families providing half-built homes for families to complete on their own, within their own budgets and tastes. Elemental has since released the plans for these projects for free, via download from their website.
This week Aravena was awarded another significant prize, the ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. The award recognizes visionaries that are making significant contributions to international community building, with an emphasis on land use and development bettering society. Our conversation starts with him describing how this ULI prize is so important to him...
Listen to episode 144 of Archinect Sessions, “The War on Cliché”.
love the qinta monroy project. it is much more convincing than the others of that typology. It is pure genius, even if it is not a new idea.
The citylab interview is good, and indeed he answered as in his statement previously almost word for word. His point is a valid one and unless we assume he is fabricating the entire point of having interns in his office, the approach to having students is entirely different than the Japanese model. 180 degrees different. What he says about productivity increasing is also believable. Teaching takes time. And more to the point, his interns were NOT not paid. They had scholarships. Not defending the problem of unpaid internships, but lets not try to kill all of our heroes just because it feels good.
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it’s funny how the pictures never show the finished fill in — as if we still prefer the ideal of the social narrative more than the reality
Think the social narrative has become this eras glossy photograph — probably more moral but a similar shallowness that I’d like to see any critic address
That said, the interview shows much to admire and criticize about this approach — which seems to co
....Which seems to exist somewhere between vernacular and internalized developer logic. Sometimes it seems brilliant and other times like an excuse. Either way, it’s specific to it’s time and place, in a country that seems to let designers collaborate with developers in more interesting ways than the ghettoized luxury service practice in the US
I wonder how much he pays his hair stylist. Probably 10 times more than his staff.
Did Elizabeth Diller have this haircut before Aravena or vice-versa? Who copied who here?
I don't know but I've always been a fan of haircuts that have the subtle hint that you may have spent the night sleeping under an overpass.
Mixed feelings on this. Surely an optimistic and engaging Sessions, but there's so much acceptance, it masks some of the concerns that have come up in threads on Archinect.
Take for example, the casual mention of "we have a brutal culture in our office (paraphrased)." What makes brutal differ from abusive? Secondly, when he makes mention of the office size being smaller, that is down from what- and is this related to the controversy over non-paid interns.
Deeper probing into both these points could have spurred deeper questions about practice and allowed him to explain/apologize/justify/spin/etc. those matters into deeper questions that work across the profession.
I recognize that being in the moment makes it difficult to see these opportunities, but I think there are people in the group that are capable of poking the bears when choose.
I definitely hear you, Marc, and those questions are valid. Alejandro came on as a guest of ULI for the prize he had just won, and I personally (not trying to speak for Ken or Paul) didn't feel like it would be fair to ULI to bring up those issues in this episode.
Marc, I think that you bring up very good points. We made the decision to use the limited time we had to focus on the good work that he and his firm have done which has led him to being recognized with awards such as this latest prize. In hindsight, I wish we did ask him about his labor practices to give him an opportunity to address the criticism that he has received on Archinect and elsewhere.
Marc, this is a fair criticism. I struggle with that, and I missed an opportunity there in that moment, because I had been thinking about that exact question before we commenced.
It would be like hitting below the belly to ask someone those difficult (and great) questions when they are receiving an award and your interview is on that occasion.
I usually play rock n' roll and have fun conversations on these type of events. Best you can do is spontaneously sneak in some very diplomatic and veiled comment, if any. Otherwise, call it a junket moment and bring out the good which is also fair.
Did I just say what Donna said?;)))
That was a reasonable decision
out of curiosity do you not think he has addressed the questions? His use of interns seems to be quite different than say Junya Ishigami or Sou Fujimoto, where there was/is no serious intent to teach or impart methods thoughts or insights. Its all one way. Neither Fujimoto nor Ishigami have really changed that pattern while Alejandro has stopped his use of interns entirely. It would be very interesting to hear his thoughts on this, but I cant imagine him saying more than he already did when he explained why he was stopping the practice entirely.
?
Will - why do you think there is a difference between the Tokyo version and Aravena's? As far as I could tell, AA dropped the practice only when architecture publications started publishing reports of unpaid interns and questioning the office directly about it, which I believe was immediately after he won the Pritzker (my timeline may be off though). Ishigami only dropped the practice as a response to the RIBA mandating that the Serpentine be awarded to those offices following RIBA guidelines on paying interns. In both cases it was primarily as a response to the 'outing' of a bad business practice that burdens the young staff, and likely to ensure no awards were pulled.
And (purely speculatively) I would tease out a guess that if Fujimoto, SANAA, etc. had the same thing happen during their Serpentine projects, the response likely would have been the same (IE - pay your interns or the commission will be revoked).
ishigami only agreed to pay the interns involved with the serpentine project. He has not changed his business practice otherwise. For what it is worth, the Japanese internship model as I know it is not about education, exactly. Students could easily spend weeks doing nothing but make 1000 paper chairs to put in a giant model for example. They certainly do more than that, but the position in the offices is kind of in that range of blunt force labor, working on repetition, sometimes including design, but not involved at the core... the model I understand from Aravena was more correctly about learning to be architects through practice of design. I may have an incorrect understanding, but they are different ways of working. And Elemental no longer has interns. They stopped the program. In both cases the system was exploitation, not questioning that, but it is worth noting the difference in what the intent was in each case, and that the resolution in both cases was also different. I would expect that Aravena would, if asked, simply say the same thing as in his statement, in which case, what is the point of the question? He agreed it was not good practice and stopped it. What do you want? Flagellation of some sort? In the case of Ishigami, when asked to address the issue at MIT he decided not to talk. He has not released any real statement either (as far as I know). Asking him the question would be very interesting, whether he answered or not....
I guess the ULI significance of the ULI component escaped me after the first few minutes. Those are all fair points with that in mind.
Will, to answer your question- yes, he has answered one of the questions. He has not answered the first to my knowledge and he certainly has not responded to them in tandem. Secondly, “seems” is the key word, given that we don’t know what is really happening. In the right context, that could expand into an interesting conversation.
I’ll follow up on another point in the sessions wishlist thread because this goes to another thing I’ve been meaning to bring up.
good point. I liked his point about being direct and brutal in the office. We are the same at my office. My partner is Dutch and they speak plainly, no bullshit. This is something I appreciate very much and I took this statement to mean he works this way actually. It would have been interesting to hear if this is what he meant. I would not presume it meant he is an asshole. As far as the shrinking size of the office, the unspoken subtext was for me that they got rid of their interns. His office is not that large though, isnt it? Somehow I have this idea that it is less than 20 people....?
He didn't pay his interns? That's an improvement from school where students pay for the honor of being verbally abused by a poser like this. (I guess it makes sense if he's one of these "profit is bad" folks!)
Other than the office politics above, it is interesting how Aravena is countering the narrative of Elemental’s own work, as if they have been somewhat pigeonholed by the social housing narrative rather than by what design can bring to social housing (or any other project type). Other times he seems to play with his own cliched thinking about architects as jargon speaking material fetishists. At times he can just sound like he hasn’t internalized the developer ethic of spreadsheet values, which can be music to the ears of McUrbanists and their media cronies. Whenever I hear the “I’m a designer for people” trope I think there is a con coming. It is because we care about people that we should want better spaces, more valued than a cardboard box.
Has he started paying his interns yet? Archinect should stop championing people who don’t even believe in minimum wage.
Agreed. New Rule: You have to be nice person to be considered a genius. It doesn't take much.
Aravena should have used his $100,000.00 Pritzker Prize money to pay back wages to everyone who ever worked for him for free.
“people are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives”
― Helen Prejean
Here’s the article showing before/after pics of Quinta Monroy. Which are much more interesting and honest — the second pitched roof project looks more suburban and monotonous. Releasing the plans is meh considering they are specific to their place
https://arcspace.com/feature/quinta-monroy/
No shade, but Amanda Kolson Hurley asked...
Ha! Marc I just came here to post that link and you beat me to it!! You’re up way earlier than I am this morning (in all things, metaphorically, too)!
Damn. His response, unconvincing.
I was 6 hours ahead, otherwise I would have been 8 hours behind.
@ beta, what about it is unconvincing? He hired interns who had scholarships to be interns. This idea of sharing the knowledge sounds a bit dodgy, but whatever. Interns are not full-time staff. My experience is it takes about 2 years before a person is able to work in our office with a bit of autonomy. That is an investment on our part. Usually they then go to an office where pay is higher and the work is more interesting, which is totally cool, if mildly annoying ;-). Interns dont ever get to that place in the office, and they don't have that intention to begin with, so they necessarily must be treated in a different way. The understanding is that they are here to learn, and we try to do that. I'll be honest I don't think we are great at that ambition, because it is a lot of work. But we do try. Since I also teach I have some ability in this direction, but its hard just the same. This is what I am thinking about when he describes his office and how productivity went up when he stopped the system. His office loses the youth perspective which I think is worth maintaining an internship program for, but it is not fair to lump his office in with Junya Ishigami, or Zaha before the laws changed in the UK. Probably the reality of his office was more complicated than he described, but then you know, it's an interview and a short statement. Unless you get into the weeds this topic is hard to take serious. So far the comments are about superficial stuff. If Alejandro were willing to have a serious discussion it would be brilliant. If not, well, what is to be gained?
Will, these two statements trouble me;
"In recent years, we were offering whoever comes here all the meals in the office, and software licenses, and whoever [could] apply for a scholarship in their country of origin [could] come here, in this kind of good-faith exchange. You’re not here as free labor. I mean, we’re training you. The things that we’re working on are not a subject of your study, but eventually, in that exchange of knowledge, you may learn something. And you may be part of this team and contributing with your ideas."
"The assumption is if you open an internship program [it’s] because you want to benefit from cheap, if not free, labor. That’s unfair. But [what] if you’re opening an internship program because there is a knowledge that is not being taught in schools, and the way for it to be shared is by you sitting on my side and taking a look at the way we talk to people, the way we swallow constraints, how to understand the policy. The outcome [of ending the internship program] after all these months is that, by not having “free labor,” our productivity should have fallen. But actually, it increased.
So we will maybe share that [knowledge] in a different way. Even though we still believe that, because of the nature of the profession, where intuition plays a very big role, most of the solutions are these kind of unspeakable certainties.
We have enough risk in the kind of projects that we do, that can fail. Every turn around the corner, there’s a possibility of failure. Everything is fragile: the budgets, the institutions, the political environment, the social environment. We don’t need another risk."
The idea that there is mono-directional exchange, that students are "given" something, without acknowledging the relationship is reciprocal; Elemental IS benefiting from someone's labor, and he never notes that fact. Paying for software, cost of running a business. Training interns, again, cost of owning a practice. Yes, these are a burden, but then if it's prohibitive, why start a practice?
love the qinta monroy project. it is much more convincing than the others of that typology. It is pure genius, even if it is not a new idea.
The citylab interview is good, and indeed he answered as in his statement previously almost word for word. His point is a valid one and unless we assume he is fabricating the entire point of having interns in his office, the approach to having students is entirely different than the Japanese model. 180 degrees different. What he says about productivity increasing is also believable. Teaching takes time. And more to the point, his interns were NOT not paid. They had scholarships. Not defending the problem of unpaid internships, but lets not try to kill all of our heroes just because it feels good.
No hero killing, but making aware of their complexities.
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