As part of a wider effort to increase the prominence and visibility of architecture firms owned and operated by diverse practitioners, including the work of BIPOC firms, Archinect has implemented new options for firms to identify as diverse. Firms will now be able to indicate if their owner(s) are Black, Female, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous, disabled, or veteran.
This new set of options makes it much easier for potential clients, job-seekers, collaborators, and fans to locate firms representing diversity. Users are now able to filter their search results when seeking firms or jobs, using the new advanced search tools.
A few firms are already identified, and any firm with an existing or yet-to-be-created firm profile can select the appropriate identification options in the firm profile settings.
Firms that elect to identify themselves in such a manner will see a symbol appear next to their name on the firm’s profile page to help identify these practices. The ability to identify firms in this way adds to existing sorting capabilities on the website that include firm size, licensure status, market sector focus, and other details.
Our hope is that by lending more specificity and transparency to firm characteristics, Archinect users will be able to more effectively seek out practices that align with their social and professional goals.
A big shout-out to Dong-Ping Wong, of FOOD, for inspiring us to take his BIPOC resource doc and apply a similar strategy to Archinect's community.
16 Comments
The firms that have diversity identification did not create this problem.AIA and its members did.AIA should have provided incentives and reprimands to encourage its members to expand its ranks.They had the data all along.The military has tried for the last 60 years and has done a better job.not perfect but wayyyyy better!.
Schools should have also been egalitarian(check instructor biases with a subjective profession like architecture) and recruit aggressively.They failed.Its little too late.Demographics will shift inevitably and now the pendulum will swing to the other side.groups not checking today will be forced to check-mark tomorrow so the underlying problem will not have been solved.Piecemeal solutions don't work.
AIA members and schools train architects who design for every single member of society yet they could not figure out how to bring a reflection of society into the profession.
This will create another problem.other groups seeking employment in a narrow range of practices(less than 15% check-marked) and taking away the responsibility of hiring from the main groups in architecture(75%).Shifting the burden of hiring to the above mentioned groups yet they did not create the problem.The AIA should be more proactive.Pay Monthly visits to its member schools and member offices like Public Health officials do to restaurants and have a discussion with members on this issue involving incentives and reprimands.
How do you expect less than 15% of members to solve a problem affecting 330 million people.what is the other 75% AIA members doing that they haven't done in the last 100 years or so
https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2016/03-Mar/AIA-Diversity-Survey/AIA-Diversity-Architecture-Survey-02.pdf
Celebrity architects benefited from their fame but never addressed these issues
can't a person just be a person?
The entirety of Civil Rights and Human Rights is built off of this question. Everything unfolding today is because history has not been able to acknowledge every person as "just a person."
how does it help to keep differentiating people into cateogries? And forcing them into these groups in a "You're with us or against us" fashion? Why is "black" a category... that's just a skin color. Why don't you have middle-eastern for instance? or jewish? Or left-handed?
What is your argument exactly? The questions here are a bit perplexing. I’m black. That’s part of my identity. My name is also Sean. But then again “that’s just a name.” Are you saying that people’s identities mean they are forced into a group? Am I “forced” into a group of men named Sean and anyone without that name is “against me?”
This is why I like the term "Anti-racist" - it implies an action. Non-racism is passive, it says that if we just ignore race, then racism has gone away. It ignores the past. It - heh - erases history.
The "starting gun" went off for White Americans 400 years ago. Non-white men in America were held back by structural racism for varying but significant amounts of time. We might all be allowed to run the race now, but it's frankly ridiculous to act like you can ignore the 300+ year head start a specific cohort was given. Especially since wealth and opportunity in this country are best built generationally (and more especially since trauma in our species is passed generationally).
When you ignore the fact that specific races have been denied opportunity for literally centuries, it's easy to point at the present and pretend their disadvantages are personal failures, and not a late start.
That's why a person can't yet "just" be a person (There's a separate argument that we should never be "just" people, our differences should be celebrated. But that's a different thread). We're working on it. & folks getting pissy cause we're not there yet is getting in the way.
koww, you clearly are not American. this is distinctly an American problem. I was introduced to it decades ago, couldn't quite understand why America was so damn racist. Part of this American problem is alluded to in tduds post above. Its one of the oldest acting government's and countries in the world, July 4th coming up, unlike many of the European countries who have gone through many overhauls and reconstruction wars. Additionally, unlike Europe or other continents no one argues what color certain nationalities can be. 20+ year ago there were bus stop adds in Berlin with a black guy in a white t-shirt with the German bird on it and the ad said [I am German]. This is the same country at the time I was told to put a photo of myself in my resume application and list if I was Protestant or Catholic to get a job. The latter seems extremely bigoted and the former I thought "Shouldn't that be an American add? Where nationality isn't tied so directly to ethnic bacgrounds?"...An architect friend from Cameroon asked me why he couldn't be German and I asked him why I couldn't be Cameroon - but we both agreed that shouldn't even be a question in the USA. So koww, and Rando, and other non-Americans, I ask you to bear with us - America has some deep seeded issues and no one has figured out how to really deal with them. It's frankly so irrational now its hard to be "just" a person.
What is your argument exactly? The questions here are a bit perplexing.
I don't understand why someone would look for a job or employee based on the racial identity of the owner
I’m black. That’s part of my identity. My name is also Sean. But then again “that’s just a name.” Are you saying that people’s identities mean they are forced into a group? Am I “forced” into a group of men named Sean and anyone without that name is “against me?”
How come you can see the absurdity of centering your life around the name Sean but you can't see the same absurdity regarding your skin color? I realize in the past people were discriminated against because of their color, but we have move on, not entrench this division among us. I don't really care about this in a social context, but within professional practice I don't see why it should be a factor. I see this as a way to shame firms because of something that has no importance, or to get credit where none is due. e.g. articles about the firm just because they are "diverse"
Why are your comments so simple, work this out, come back and reformulate a response that in the very least demonstrates you've thought this through. Because you're acting like this is a mandate, instead of another tool in the box to allow people a bit more depth into the companies they're applying to give their labor to. How is this any different than what corporations provide regarding their fiscal, and company values, how? I for one would like to know whether or not the company I'm applying to has any ties to Russian mobsters, does buildings for the CIA/NSA/DHS/ICE...is that a problem?
In regards to the now-deleted comments (& feel free to delete this if it detracts from a better conversation): The stated concern is that a mediocre person of color will take work from deserving, qualified white men. I think that *explicit* concern is covering a more *implicit* concern that a mediocre white man will lose work to more qualified people of color who've previously been denied the opportunity.
Whining about meritocracy ignores the reality that we are not currently living in one, and complaining about things like this is - whether one realizes it or not - impeding attempts to build a more meritocratic system.
Even then the comments seem misguided for what they're supposedly concerned about (both explicitly and implicitly). Archinect isn't rolling this out so firms can identify people they want to hire ... so not really about a person of color taking work from a white person.
Instead, firms are able to voluntarily disclose their own leadership demographics as another layer for people to use in viewing the firms who 1) chose to create a profile, and 2) choose to use this. This isn't something radical. I don't mean that to knock on Archinect's effort (I'm actually applauding it), but rather I'm pointing out that if this is the first time you've seen this you're probably not as outraged by it as you claim you are (see tduds' earlier post elsewhere about bad faith arguments).
An example of another voluntary disclosure option (popular among a number of architecture firms) showing firm diversity demographics: ILFI's Just Certification. Less fine-grained as Archinect's approach, but still a good picture of male/female and white/non-white makeup overall, and male/female makeup of firm leadership/senior management.
Another? Your state probably has minority and/or women owned business certifications. Google "minority owned business [your state here]" or "women owned business [your state here]."
the most critical flaw in the logic of colorblind merit is that it assumes there are clear objective standards we can use to measure potential employees and their performance will follow accordingly. it is 0% like this - we all started as hopeless useless interns dependant on the good grace of a benevolent employer to get experience, mentorship, and money. the accomplished ones 20 years out aren't merely the obvious first picks - we are the ones who persisted, found support, and developed a network of colleagues who feed us information, opportunities, and friendship. in practice colorblind evaluations of subjective merit have the outcome we support people who 'seem good' to us, and the measurable result is that those people mostly resemble the people who hired them.
Idiots choose people based on their skin color. If you do not have a clear and appropriate criteria to evaluate potential employees, then you should not be an employer. In the United States, the law prohibits discrimination based on race. If you hire someone because of that person's race, then you violated the law. If you refuse someone employment because of that person's race, then you violated the law.
I mean, I've been working in this field for 34 years and I would STRONGLY encourage people to go to work for firms that are women-led. I've had great experiences at women-led firms and generally less-good experiences at male-led firms.
Same. My best bosses (& profs & advisors) have mostly been women.
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