Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to Feld Architecture Breeze Blocks where our editors share their thoughts on works in progress, urgent matters, and current happenings in architecture and spatial politics. My name is Charlie Cleos, editor on Feld Architecture's Amsterdam team, and this episode is the second of a two part interview I did with Marisa Courtright. Marissa is the author of the Fail Architecture article, Death to the Calling. A Job in Architecture is still just a job. And more recently, can this be, Surely this cannot be a book composed of three essays on the subject of architectural workers organizing in Europe. In this second part, we consider why it's taken architects so long to organize whether architects can be considered to be oppressed and then closed with a discussion of various organizing efforts across Europe and an assessment of the consciousness raising role of the meme account, Dan Lloyd Wright. But first, we start by speaking about the Pritz Prize and the problem of design Solutionism. You can find a transcription of this conversation and the first one on our website before we start. Another quick reminder, that third architecture is a mostly voluntary and seriously underfunded operation, which always struggles to keep a steady flow of articles. So if you can spare some money to support our independent architectural criticism, we'd really appreciate it. You can do so by heading to the donate page on our side. Okay. Now onto the main conversation with Marissa.
Speaker 1 00:01:33 I was wondering what you thought about maybe more recent Pritz prize winners, Laton Sal and Francis Carey, and, um, maybe some historic movements within architecture that maybe actually like hint towards how architecture can be a bit more embedded within the community. Like I, I dunno, the, um, I really like referring to, for instance, the s a ar, uh, the, I'm not gonna get this right, but like, there's basically the mobile architecture service that emerged in the revolutionary period of the seventies in Portugal, and they were like basically just student groups who were making themselves available to help out with local building projects. It's not hard really, it's just, it does seem like it's, it's sort of, yeah, I dunno, very far away from the way that most people see themselves as architects now. So I, I'm wondering, I suppose like whether you see some of these things as something that are like pointing towards the way, like some of these newer, uh, Yeah. Pritzker winners and if you are, whether architecture can kind of reconstitute along these ends.
Speaker 2 00:02:44 Yeah, I should be clear <laugh> upfront that I, I don't, I don't have much truck with, with actual buildings. I don't show any in the book. I don't discuss any, I have seen the work of Laca to and bust and, and Francis Carre in the past, and I think it's beautiful. I haven't followed them closely enough to maybe distinguish them from earlier winners of the Pritzker in terms of how they practice or how they engage as different kinds of modes of architectural production from those that have come before them. My guess is that in large part, they aren't so different. I'm wary of the Pritzker in general as this kind of king maker of, again, generally private architectural firms, when that is the dominant mode of architectural production today. I I don't know if it's particularly interesting to give them more credit than, than they might be due in the broader scheme of how we might want to be doing, let's say, architectural production.
Speaker 2 00:03:47 Like how do we organize architectural workers? In what ways do they find their projects? In what ways do they finance their projects? In what ways do they construct their projects? In what ways are those projects maintained and administered throughout time? I think we have a lot more to see in that regard. I'm sure there are so many small un celebrated versions or formations really of people who are doing interesting kinds of work, but that are operating at such a scale and without an interest for let's say notoriety that simply won't, won't be known. And that's okay in some respects because it's probably more important that they're doing their work on a scale where they have contact with people at a, at the most meaningful local level, let's say. And in some respects, maybe that's what we should be aiming for, that the horizon doesn't need a Pritzker prize.
Speaker 2 00:04:43 It doesn't need internationally renowned architectural offices to ratify what kinds of architecture are good or beautiful or worthy of celebration. Maybe there are going to be certain forms of architectural production that comes out of those kinds of places that we can be happy about. But on the whole, we need to maintain a kind of critical stance towards them and in hopes, again, not to shift some kind of media attention to other kinds of formations, but just to recognize that, that we need to have some critique of power in how we think about what those new forms could be. How do they try to reinvest the power dynamic in, in architectural production in a far more local and let's say democratic way?
Speaker 1 00:05:31 I think I pretty much totally agree. I tend not to get really many opportunities to lay my cards on the table and admit that I personally don't think that it's almost at this point too much of a distraction to think about the possibilities of design fixing the problems of artificial scarcity that are primarily the source, at least of, of most of the problems today, uh, in, in overly extractive economies and you know, yeah, global inequities and yeah, so on and so forth. Uh, it, it's not something that you can kind of create the perfect space where suddenly we have a little bit of rest from the churn of, of, uh, of like, um, ever increasing speed, uh, that makes us all kind of stressed and tired and like angry and unhappy and anxious and worried about the future. There's no design that will fix that. It's, it's purely yeah, a distraction at this point. And yeah, I, you know, I don't think that, you know, in a utopian scenario that there isn't a place for like design to facilitate and, and consolidate a, a bigger movement towards redistribution of resources.
Speaker 2 00:06:54 Yeah, I think between John Patrick Leary and Sasha Castanza Shock, we have this idea of kind of design thinking as a problem unto itself precisely for what you've just said, which is that it really locks designers, architects into this idea that their only, or at least their primary mode of problem solving should be offering design solutions. And that means that they interpret problems only in such a way that design would be the answer. I find that certainly limiting, but also in another way, tragic <laugh> hitting the square into the circle or the circle into the square, whichever it is, that it's just how can you ever do anything properly if you don't diagnose it properly in the first place? And if you don't have the humility or the capacity to understand what you're not fit for, then how can you really properly address something that you are fit for?
Speaker 2 00:07:54 I agree with you that, that there is no design solution to the climate urgency in so far as architects will never find a design solution to ending oil and gas production. That's, that's simply not going to happen. And the fact that they would try to bring design solutions to problems of such magnitude when there are from other sectors, solutions that would actually work, approaches that would actually work, but require far more well political approaches to them signifies only their own irrelevance and in fact their own, um, hindrance to, to those problems being solved in a way that would actually solve them. And that, that's what's tragic about it, is the architects have through the calling been told, Oh, you're going to do such an important thing. You're gonna have such an important role in the future of improving the world. And when you're taught that you can only design a solution to a problem, and none of these problems are design problems, well, what are you, what are you bringing to the table?
Speaker 2 00:08:57 What are you, what are you really offering? Um, so I, I hope that it's not too late maybe for architectural workers, design professionals more broadly to, to walk out of that a little bit and, and on the one hand have some humility about what they're not capable of doing, but also try to bring other kinds of skills to those problems. This is the point of talking about organizing that architects are not architects before they're workers. This is the point of insisting on architectural workers that workers organize and organizing is, is how we can address the climate crisis. Organizing is how we can address police violence or anything that we really wanna solve has to be through organizing. It can't be through design. This
Speaker 1 00:09:37 Is potentially a nice point to get to the last part of the book. You brought up the, uh, articulation of architects as architectural workers, not, you know, secondarily, but, uh, primarily and most people working in this profession are architectural workers, and that that then creates the conditions for organizing. I'm wondering if you could kind of, uh, unpack some of the problems with that process to use the kind of, or to sort of riff off the title of the book. How could it be that it's taken so long actually to, uh, get to this point? I, I had this kind of, I guess, mildly cheeky question that you also point out in your book is like, are architects really oppressed? Do they deserve to organize?
Speaker 2 00:10:26 Let's start with our architects oppressed. Um, let's, this is why it's so important to make this distinction because architects often means the person who owns the company, or rather it refers to someone who might someday start their own company. And I don't think those people are oppressed. No, not in the marxian sense of class oppression because they are or they hope to become the owners of capital. So <laugh>, let's follow that and say architectural workers. Yes. Architectural business owners. No, and, and keep it there. One magazine that I cite in my book is, is this zen put together by, they call themselves foreign architects in Switzerland. And they address precisely this question. They tackle the assumption that because they're in Switzerland, they're getting paid loads of money because it's such a rich country, and they make the case that in fact, based on the cost of living, based on how expensive it is to get an architectural education, Yes, architectural workers in Switzerland and perhaps especially foreign ones who are not themselves Swiss and lack maybe some of the same rights or knowledge of the sector that Swiss architects would are indeed oppressed.
Speaker 2 00:11:51 That they are indeed working too many hours. They have underpaid labor that even in what we consider to be the best case scenario, you're working in Switzerland, they too are, are having a rough time of it. And I think that's really important that we bear in mind that there is no ideal country even as much as Switzerland might try to barricade itself <laugh> against the eu and, you know, other, other market forces that would, that would change it. There is no safe haven from this. There is no safe haven of industries either that architects think that as a profession, like lawyers or doctors, there's somehow insulated from blue collar jobs that are facing precarity. And that's just simply not the case. We see that architectural workers struggle to make ends meet all over in Europe as well as in the us and it's not the subject of my, of my own work, but certainly the world around.
Speaker 2 00:12:48 So let's, let's conclude that by saying yes, and that they are more than entitled to organize not only because they should improve conditions for themselves, but because they should be looking through their organizing to change the broader conditions of architectural production. The point isn't just that architect should get paid more or shouldn't have to work so many hours because it's not nice for them, but because they participate in incredibly harmful activities, like the result of their labor is often incredibly injust, right? In terms of the environmental cost of architectural production, in terms of social inequalities that architectural production reproduces, architectural workers should be concerned about that and they should be cognizant of what they might be able to change should they organize. Why haven't they done this so far? You mentioned the first part of the title of the book, which is a shout out to one of the famed Yugo slo and writers of the past where the novel that I, that I referenced, the bridge over the Dreama, the author Evo Andre basically ends the book with the protagonist having this really difficult reconciliation with himself.
Speaker 2 00:14:05 You know, he thought, Wow, I, I've worked my whole life. I've saved my whole life. I did what the church told me. I did what everyone in the town told me, and still my life has come to ruin. And I think that's, that's part of why architects haven't organized yet, or why architectural workers haven't organized yet, is because you think you're doing everything by the book. You think you're called to do this thing. You're gonna put in all the time in school. You're gonna put in all the time at work, you're gonna spend all the money, you're gonna go into such debt and you think it's gonna be okay, but it's not <laugh>. And there is this sense of not only frustration, but disbelief that can, can this be like this simply can't be what I, what I did all of this for. And I think without any kind of foundation for collectively expressing that frustration or that disbelief, it quickly turns into a kind of enemy that's just, I'm going to wait out my time.
Speaker 2 00:14:57 I'm going to try to get through this. And there have been, of course, structural factors that have prevented people from organizing. The simple fact that architectural workers work so many hours is we could say one of the main causes why they don't organize, they simply don't have the time for it. But as we've seen, not only in the architectural industry, but for instance in other sectors, in cases of multinationals preventing people from organizing, there are strong anti-labor forces at work. Amazon has to the tune of millions and millions and millions of dollars conducted union busting activities. Starbucks is doing the same right now. And of course it doesn't only happen on that, that massive level, but it's the most visible there simply because of the amount of money and energy those companies put in. But we can imagine far, far more kind of local and maybe even more subtle forms of union busting or anti organizing happening in, in smaller companies like architectural firms in the UK and the us there, there rise of these so-called employee owned companies that try to point out, even though these new forms of quote unquote ownership are supposed to be granting employees some in some shares, some financial stake in the companies, they don't meaningfully change the balance of power such that workers would have any control over the company.
Speaker 2 00:16:19 So management will be pointing out, Oh look, now you own part of the company. We're really democratizing company. You don't need a union. You don't need to find any other way of, of talking to your coworkers because we have this, this new ownership plan. And so they're finding ways to distract to, to deviate course. And, and we could think of many, many more, but I think those are enough to say that there are plenty of things that are preventing architectural workers and workers more generally from organizing.
Speaker 1 00:16:50 You mentioned the bit about time. I, I mean that's definitely the experience I've been getting. It's, it's like easy enough to get someone to respond to an Instagram message asking, uh, architects in the Netherlands is everything okay? Tell us about your experiences at work, which is what we did earlier this year. An answer to that takes five minutes, but moving from that to having a meeting, working out some demands and, and seeing what level of capacity people have to follow through with them. It's early days yet, but we are, we, we've a small group at this point trying to kind of work out like what, yeah, what do we actually want to do here? Like everybody seems to be in the same sort of boat and there's enough of us, let's probably like hundreds of people that could potentially be motivated to actually be pissed off enough to, to actually want to turn the table over and, uh, stop playing the game or whatever and, and have maybe like stopped drinking the Kool-Aid.
Speaker 1 00:17:47 Um, but yeah, time is, is, uh, is a real resource and um, yeah, that's, that's the beauty of of of it all, isn't it? It's almost wrapped up in a neat little package. Like it's much easier to just carry on, uh, because it's just a lot of effort to both give up on dreams, but also give up time to follow through with giving up on those dreams, you know, and, and actually like fighting against that. Um, I wanted to put this quote out from one of your interviewees. This person from U v w United Voices of the world section architectural workers, I believe who, who writes, um, none of us really want to get into a fight, uh, but all of us want stuff to change and I still need to go through that process of realizing stuff isn't going to change without putting up a fight. I thought that was really telling in a way that that, that really, like c with my general vibe is like, I I don't really want to tip the table over, I just want to like meet with people and talk about it and then see where that goes. But even that's actually quite bold at this point. I, I feel like that was somewhat indicative of the tone of, of many of the interviewees that you spoke to, right? That it was not complete fire brands.
Speaker 2 00:18:59 No, and I would say the people that I interviewed from United Voices of the World section of architectural workers, the union in the uk, they are probably the furthest along, if I can call it, you know, maybe going, going in a certain direction. They're the furthest towards taking this oppositional stance of understanding the relation of struggle that's involved in having to put up a fight, right? Or has, she says having to get into a fight. They're, they're not fire brands, but they're cognizant of that. And not everyone I spoke to even would've put it in those terms, I don't think. But maybe it's, once you've taken the move to join a union, you're accepting that there has to be this collective action, right? You're accepting that you need to form some kind of collective because you alone are not going to be able to do very much. And perhaps unless you position yourself in this relation of struggle, if you try to work with, I don't know, the management of your company, it it may not go quite the way you would like it to, you might find yourself back in our vocabulary or, or rhetoric discussion of, of being co-opted in some way. So I think the experience of the people who are in the union, they, they put it maybe the most clearly in in terms of their needing to be this fight.
Speaker 1 00:20:27 You talked to a, an admin of Dan Lloyd Wright, and, um, I feel like initially I was a little bit skeptical of their role in all of this, um, myself, uh, just insofar as it seemed like a lot of coverage of this, which is just like it's describing an issue, but like where are we, Like what's the actual nitty gritty of actually getting people to do something, which is really hard, but I'm wondering what Yeah. Uh, to put it in simple terms as a question. Like what's your assessment of the importance of their work, uh, Dan Lloyd rights work in terms of, I guess consciousness raising?
Speaker 2 00:21:07 I think they, they start to burst the bubble in, in a number of different ways for people who are related to the architectural industry. They have followers, of course, who are just there for the laws, but most of their followers, I think are either architectural students, are young architectural workers who have to some extent been indoctrinated in what we've been talking about in terms of the architectural culture of overwork, underpaid certain expectations of, of, of too much labor really, Dan Lloyd Wright does talk about that. They do talk about these unhealthy expectations that the architectural industry has of its workers, and they point out all of the problems with that. That's certainly high on the list of their importance because it needs, it needs some undoing, right? It's not just about learning what should this be, but it's about unlearning what it definitely shouldn't be and what we've, what we've in many cases been indoctrinated into.
Speaker 2 00:22:05 I think they're really helpful in that respect. What I also think they're helpful for is initially attracting an architectural audience. People who, as I might describe it, you know, think of themselves as architects, but not as architectural workers. So not only are they being brought into this idea of the architectural worker based on having some understanding of themselves is precarious, right? They, they know it may be in their own personal way, but Dan, like right, they think tries to bring out the precarity that's more systematic in the profession, and they connect that to important issues that are not considered to be architectural. They've spoken out a number of times about Palestine, for instance, and that might be one of the reasons why they're facing shadow banning <laugh> or other forms of censorship from Instagram. But they're, you know, they're, they're bringing architectural audiences into these other issues that they might not be paying attention to.
Speaker 2 00:23:05 They're not going to be following accounts that address those other things. So I think that's important just to, to plant as a, as a first step. They bring up people who are engaged in other forms of architectural production, as we were talking about before, and they're importantly not trying to do everything themselves. They point to other groups in architecture like Uvw saw, like the future architects front, others, I'm forgetting now, but to say they are drawing attention to other kinds of groups who are doing things that are related and complimentary, but not exactly the same. And I think what's maybe most crucial about them is that they are one of a number of Instagram accounts or social media accounts or small voices that are kind of pinging in the back of people's minds that even if they disappear, even if their account gets deleted for whatever reason, that are going to be other people who are also doing this.
Speaker 2 00:24:05 So they haven't tried to make themselves the kind of standard bearer, the one, the, the one and only architectural me account to end all other architectural meme accounts. That the point is that the floodgates have opened, right? That we will have from here on hopefully some, at least minimal degree of consciousness raising across the architectural industry for young people to be aware of. And it doesn't mean that it's done everything, but it means that we're at least off the ground. And I think they've, they've been really helpful in spurring that growth of, of people wanting to check in, of wanting to be aware and that yeah, hopefully there will be thousands more of them, right? There already are so many little offshoots. The point is that everyone has to at least log on to this, this bare minimum level of following an account on Instagram. And then, okay, let's see where we can go from there.
