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

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.

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2015. Format: Paperback.
Edition: 1st.
Pages: 296.
ISBN: 9781472570499.
Illustrations: 16 halftones.
Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm.

Table of contents
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