The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative Class, and the Politics of Design

Description

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. FC Half Title Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgments Foreword: Joan Ockman Introduction: Peggy Deamer Part I: The commodification ofdesign labor Chapter 1. Dynamic of the general intellect: Franco Berardi Chapter 2. White night before a manifesto: Metahaven Chapter 3. The capitalist origin of the concept of creative work: Richard Biernacki Chapter 4. The architect as entrepreneurial self : Hans Hollein’s TV performance “Mobile Office”(1969): Andreas Rumpfhuber Part II: The concept ofarchitectural labor Chapter 5. Work: Peggy Deamer Chapter 6. More for less: Architectural labor and design productivity: Paolo Tombesi Chapter 7. Form and labor: Toward a history of abstraction in architecture: Pier Vittorio Aureli Part III: Design(ers)/Build(ers) Chapter 8. Writing work: Changing practices of architectural specification: Katie Lloyd Thomas and Tilo Amhoff Chapter 9. Working globally: The human networks of transnational architectural projects: Mabel O. Wilson, Jordan Carver, and Kadambari Baxi Part IV: The construction of thecommons Chapter 10. Labor, architecture, and the new feudalism: Urban space as experience: Norman M. Klein Chapter 11. The hunger games: Architects in danger: Alicia Carrió Chapter 12. Foucault’s “environmental” power: Architecture and neoliberal subjectivization: Manuel Shvartzberg Part V: The profession Chapter 13. Three strategies for new value propositions of design practice: Phillip G. Bernstein Chapter 14. Labor and talent in architecture: Thomas Fisher Chapter 15. The (ac)credit(ation) card: Neil Leach Afterword: Michael Sorkin Index