The Architect as Worker

Directly confronting the nature of contemporary architectural work, this book is the first to address a void at the heart of architectural discourse and thinking. For too long, architects have avoided questioning how the central aspects of architectural "practice" (professionalism, profit, technology, design, craft, and building) combine to characterize the work performed in the architectural office. Nor has there been a deeper evaluation of the unspoken and historically-determined myths that assign cultural, symbolic, and economic value to architectural labor. The Architect as Worker presents a range of essays exploring the issues central to architectural labor. These include questions about the nature of design work; immaterial and creative labor and how it gets categorized, spatialized, and monetized within architecture; the connection between parametrics and BIM and labor; theories of architectural work; architectural design as a cultural and economic condition; entrepreneurialism; and the possibility of ethical and rewarding architectural practice. The book is a call-to-arms, and its ultimate goal is to change the practice of architecture. It will strike a chord with architects, who will recognize the struggle of their profession; with students trying to understand the connections between work, value, and creative pleasure; and with academics and cultural theorists seeking to understand what grounds the discipline.

Peggy Deamer is Professor of Architecture and Assistant Dean at Yale University, USA, and a visiting scholar at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

Foreword - Joan Ockman, University of Pennsylvania School of Design, USA Introduction - Peggy Deamer, Yale University, USA Part I: The Commodification of Design Labor 1. Dynamic of the General Intellect - Franco Berardi, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milano, Italy 2. White Night before a Manifesto - Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk, Metahaven, The Netherlands 3. The Capitalist Origin of the Concept of Creative Work - Richard Biernacki, University of California, San Diego, USA 4. The Architect as Entrepreneurial Self: Hans Hollein's TV Performance 'Mobile Office' (1969) - Andreas Rumpfhuber, Expanded Design, Vienna, Austria Part II: The Concept of Architectural Labor 5. Work - Peggy Deamer, Yale University, USA 6. More for Less: Architectural Labor and Design Productivity - Paolo Tombesi, University of Melbourne, Australia 7. Form and Labor: Towards a History of Abstraction in Architecture - Pier Vittorio Aureli, Architectural Association, UK Part III: Design(ers)/Build(ers) 8. Writing Work: Changing Practices of Architectural Specification - Katie Lloyd Thomas, Newcastle University, UK and Tilo Amhoff, University of Brighton, UK 9. Working Globally: The Human Networks of Transnational Architectural Projects - Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia University, USA), Jordan Carver (University at Buffalo School of Architecture, USA) and Kadambari Baxi (Barnard College, USA) Part IV: The Construction of the Commons 10. Labor, Architecture, and the New Feudalism: Urban Space as Experience - Norman M. Klein (California Institute of the Arts, USA) 11. The Hunger Games: Architects in Danger - Alicia Carrió (Carrió Studio, Spain) 12. Foucault's 'Environmental' Power: Architecture and Neoliberal Subjectivization - Manuel Shvartzberg (University of Columbia, USA) Part V: The Profession 13. Three Strategies for New Value Propositions of Design Practice - Phillip G. Bernstein (Yale University, USA and Autodesk, USA) 14. Labor and Talent in Architecture - Thomas Fisher (University of Minnesota, USA) 15. The (Ac)Credit(ation) Card - Neil Leach (University of Southern California, USA) Afterword - Michael Sorkin (Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, CUNY, USA) Index