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Across the United States, construction workers were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not to diminish the hardships and sacrifices of other essential workers and industries affected by the pandemic, Susannah Jacob of the Atlantic highlights the ongoing dangers and overshadowed accounts of... View full entry
Faced with this level of acquiescence, the case for unionising the profession becomes compelling. As a regulator of working conditions and a protective body for workers, a trade union would force the industry to adapt to healthier working conditions; without these decisions being left to the leading staff and management who are themselves usually under pressure to attain expected productivity levels. — Failed Architecture
While Eleanor Hill's Failed Architecture piece looks specifically at the missed opportunity of British architects to formally unionize, the argument for organized representation could be applied to the profession on a broader global level. "The specialisation of labour and consequent creation of... View full entry
Now, Dubai has taken a step further along the road to making such dreams a reality by announcing that 25% of the city-state’s new buildings will be made using 3D printers by 2025.
The move is part of an ambitious 3D-printing strategy announced in 2016 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice-president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai.
— weforum.org
According to the Dubai Future Foundation the city aims to reduce labor by 70% and cut overall costs by 90% with their 3D-printed construction plan. The strategy not only aims at addressing the UN's projected density for urban areas in the future, but also holds potential to solve Dubai's severe... View full entry
The Architecture Lobby released the following statement with regards to the #metoo movement in architecture. The organization invites firms to join their Solidarity Network in support of those who speak up against sexual harassment or abuse. "We, The Architecture Lobby, stand with victims of... View full entry
Working toward fairer professional architectural practice is an ongoing uphill climb in the industry, but which practices are already getting it right? The Architecture Lobby recently co-launched an initiative called JustDesign.Us, a certification process to distinguish architecture firms with... View full entry
...even as Uber talks up its determination to treat drivers more humanely, it is engaged in an extraordinary behind-the-scenes experiment in behavioral science to manipulate them in the service of its corporate growth — an effort whose dimensions became evident in interviews with several dozen current and former Uber officials, drivers and social scientists, as well as a review of behavioral research. — the New York Times
"Because its drivers are independent contractors, they lack most of the protections associated with employment. By mastering their workers’ mental circuitry, Uber and the like may be taking the economy back toward a pre-New Deal era when businesses had enormous power over workers and few checks... View full entry
The prospect of Brexit choking off the supply of EU workers is reshaping Britain's homebuilding industry, with big companies increasingly looking to factory-manufacture houses in sections that can be slotted together on-site with minimal labour.
Many of Britain's leading housebuilders, including Berkeley, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon and Your Housing, told Reuters they were either planning new developments of prefabricated homes or considering doing so.
— Reuters
"You can almost feel the fear among the contractors and housebuilders where they've been surviving on labor from outside the country," says Mark Stevenson, a managing director of construction supplier Kingspan. "We're being pulled in a direction that customers want us to go in, from more work... View full entry
In the first survey about the state of the American design industry, more than half of the 9,514 respondents reported working more than 40 hours a week, with the average logging in four extra hours over what’s legally required of full-time workers in the US. Of the design industries surveyed, those working in design education, public relations, environmental graphics, and architecture logged the most overtime hours. — Quartz
This probably doesn't come as a surprise to any practicing architects—working overtime, often well into the night, is common practice in the field. Moreover, this counts logged hours. But, as everyone knows, architects often work extra hours without billing for it, whether motivated by love of a... View full entry
The National Labor Relations Board decided in favor of Columbia University graduate students and teaching assistants in a landmark case over their right to unionize. The decision will affect private universities nationwide and overturns a 2004 Brown University precedent, which asserted that... View full entry
I think it was a wonderful moment in American history. I thought what Michelle Obama was attempting to do was to draw that link to show that it isn't just what's going on in the White House now and isn't it great that there's a black family there, but there's a much longer history that needs to be appreciated...
[It was] just grueling, grueling kind of work. And nobody was really willing ... to do it. So slave labor played a massive role in getting this city built.
— Clarence Lusane
During her speech at the DNC on Monday, First Lady Michelle Obama alluded to the White House's history of slave labor during the 1790s. NPR interviews Clarence Lusane, chairperson of Howard University's political science department and author of “The Black History of the White House”, who... View full entry
If you're a designer who works with clients, here's something you're probably familiar with: the project that never ends. The actual designing may take a matter of hours, but presenting the idea to a client, making little tweaks and edits, finding a middle ground between your vision and theirs? That process can take months [...]
For his graduate project, Ingemann Breitenstein spent time in product design studios across London researching the inefficiencies in that designer-client process.
— Fast Co.Design
"The result is an algorithm that takes a basic idea for a product and generates countless variations on its design—as directed by a physical controller. Ingemann Breitenstein calls the machine the Unpaid Intern—a tongue-and-cheek nod to the mindless photoshopping and last... View full entry
For decades, bosses [in certain professions] have groomed their assistants to be the next generation of big shots by working them long hours for low wages.
Call it the “Devil Wears Prada” economy, after the novel depicting life working for a fictionalized Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor.
But now, with the Obama administration moving to require time-and-a-half overtime pay for most salaried employees making less than $47,476 a year, that business model is suddenly under assault.
— the New York Times
"The change presents more than an economic challenge for the companies that rely on the willingness of young, ambitious workers to trade pay and self-respect for a shot at a prestige job down the road."The article doesn't explicitly reference architecture, but as Archinect's past coverage on the... View full entry
A very large 3D printer measuring 20 x 120 x 40 ft (6 x 36 x 12 m) did most of the work, printing the building by extruding a cement mixture layer by layer, in a similar method by which WinSun's 3D-printed homes were made (WinSun is involved in this project too). There were also some additional smaller mobile 3D-printers used too, however.
It took 17 days to print the basic building, but it then required finishing both internally and externally.
— Gizmag
How many people does it take to 3D print an office? Well, according to Arabian Business, "The labour involved in the printing process included one staff to monitor the function of the printer, in addition to a group of seven people to install the building components on site as well as a team of... View full entry
Join us for an uninvited Chicago Biennial installation consisting of scenarios depicting the absurdities of architectural practice/labor/work. We seek to expand the current conversation about architecture to include an actionable critique of the real, often tragic circumstances that precarious creative workers face on a daily basis. — - The Architecture Lobby
Alongside the official installations and programmed events, a host of uninvited and unofficial events have coalesced around the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the first major architecture biennial in the United States. One of the most promising comes from the Architecture Lobby, "an organization... View full entry
When most people think of the Arabian peninsula, they think of the opulent man-made islands of Dubai and that city’s sparking, futuristic towers... But with his series Crossings, Arko Datto shifts the attention to the millions of migrant workers from throughout Asia who are building these structures.
Datto used Google Maps and Google Earth to capture the vast highways, sprawling landscapes, and grand projects that laborers have built under conditions that border on slavery.
— Wired
“The work deals with the issue in a fairly abstract/tangential way,” Datto told Wired Magazine. “The total lack of human presence in the images is symbolic of the anonymity, facelessness, and lack of representation that the migrant workers suffer.” View full entry
