In the week since news broke over the leadership crisis taking place at the Architectural Association in London over the direction of the school under Eva Franch i Gilabert, dueling open letters have been circulated within the architecture community commenting on the episode. 

"A power-grab fueled by less-than-progressive emotions"

First, a letter began to circulate early this week offering support for Gilabert from elite members of the global architectural community.  

The letter, signed by at least 187 high-profile academics, designers, and architects who sit outside the AA community, is accessible here and explains that "every new administration, particularly those very few who have only recently come to be led by women or people of color, deserves patience and support as the inevitable realignments unfold. This need is made all the more urgent during a pandemic and a time of reckoning with social inequity." The text goes on to cite sexism and the stresses of the pandemic as potential vectors for the leadership dispute while stating plainly that the signatories are neither involved with the proceedings at the school nor fully tuned in with the nature of the disagreement.

The letter, crafted to express "profound unease with the recent vote of no confidence" in Gilabert's leadership, lauds the embattled director as "one of the most inspired leaders and radical thinkers of a younger generation of architects" and explains that "the idea of hastily putting into force the recent ‘vote of no confidence’ during the health and white supremacy struggle is suspect as it uses the pandemic for anti-democratic purposes—accelerating prejudice."

Referencing the narrow tally against Gilabert's leadership, the letter concludes that "although we cannot attest to the electoral process itself, the results indicate a divided audience during a distressed period for all members. The even split does not necessarily indicate an insurmountable crisis within the AA. As outsiders, colleagues, friends and allies, we kindly and deeply urge the Council not to proceed in removing Eva Franch from her position."

"There is a crisis of consent"

A response signed by AA course tutors Ricardo Ruivo and Will Orr, which can be read here, was issued more recently in an effort to counter "the enormous coercive pressure which is now effectively extorting the school through public media." 

"The current crisis at the AA is not," the authors write, "as those supportive of the current director rightly say, a simple matter of the person. It is the culmination of a long historical process of neoliberal management and ideology within architectural academia, academia at large, and the entire architectural discipline. It is not an expression of any special characteristics of either the AA or its current director, but a manifestation of destructive trends that have found, at the AA and in the conduct of its director, the conditions for a breaking point."

The letter continues: "The AA has long suffered from systemic problems at the level of managerial transparency, inclusion of diverse voices, and extreme exploitation of labour. In this, it is an ordinary architecture school. That these issues are causing a break now and not earlier reflects the radicalisation of some of these problems over the last few years--a tendency that is longer than the current director’s leadership, but which she has nevertheless worsened rather than improved."

The text highlights several new pieces of information, explaining that "the final breaking point that triggered this crisis was defined by allegations against the director of worker abuse and bullying, with prominent cases being brought forth by women staff. The notion is that they would not have complained were the abuse coming from a male director, and worse, that it is their and everyone’s duty to extend patriarchal privilege to a female figure of authority."

Taking aim at the contents and implications of the initial open letter, the authors explain that "gender prejudice and patriarchy are extremely serious problems in society, and that is precisely why it is troubling that the open letter systematically couples them with institutional power" before highlighting that "the open letter focuses legitimate feminist concerns on the defense of a female director at the expense of women workers, which is damaging in itself, but it also reveals the core class character of the letter and its authors."

The response continues, stating that "two years ago, the school community thought it could elect a director, and entrust that director with undertaking progressive reforms. Now, two years on, it has realised that the school community itself, its students and its workers, must undertake and lead that process." 

"This shift is what makes the no confidence vote so threatening to institutional authority figures in the architectural world, who, as the 1% of the discipline, circulate in a lucrative and elite stratum. Indeed, it is threatening to the point that they write and sign a letter of managerial solidarity against the rights of workers and students to take ownership of their own problems, and of the very process to achieve progressive goals—not from above, guided by progressive elites— but from below."

Describing the initial open letter as being undertaken in "bad faith," the authors explain that the effort to support Gilabert over the concerns of AA students and workers situates the letter as "a manifesto of false, neoliberal, trickle-down progressivism."

The letter concludes: "No one in the school community knows exactly how the democratic reform process will now unfold. That is yet to be determined by the many people who are actively and actually involved. We ask that, if they wish, those outside the school offer their solidarity to that process, since it is what truly matters."