This May Day marks our third birthday, and, to celebrate we are offering 28 coupons—one for each issue we have published—valued at $51 each (see what we did there?). Simply subscribe, and use the code ‘MAYDAY’ at the checkout. Only first time subscribers are eligible.
Along with being our birthday, May Day is of course International Workers’ Day, and to celebrate we are sharing all of the labor-related pieces from our February Issue, #26, Union Fever. Those articles, linked below, assume the form of reports, personal appeals, historical excursions, and hypotheticals, pertaining to organized labor and the unionization of architectural workers.
To be sure, the failed drive at SHoP is a major setback for the seedling labor movement within architecture. Nevertheless, since AWU went public, architects have openly debated the merits of unionizing the profession more than at any time in recent memory. Those sympathetic to the prospect might use this moment as an opportunity to take a step back, reflect, and learn from the current outcomes to plot the road ahead…
KATE WAGNER: DEAR ARCHITECT-WORKERS
Architecture is an inherently collective endeavor. This simple fact is routinely suppressed, has been suppressed, perhaps as long as architecture has existed. The solitary genius overshadows the hundreds, if not thousands, of people working together to execute ideas into something real. Within this collective lies the lifeblood of any firm, for which the sole architect is but a figurehead, and sometimes not even that…
NICOLAS KEMPER: ANTITRUST AND ARCHITECTURE (COORDINATION NOT DOMINATION)
The drive to unionize architects looks like a contest between management and labor. This characterization, however, would be misleading. While a union may focus on the relationship between the leaders of firms and their employees, the costs of accommodating their demands will ultimately be shouldered by clients. It would be logical, then, that just as workers are organizing to bargain with their bosses, bosses should coordinate to bargain with their clients. Logical, but illegal…
ANTONIO PACHECO: PERNICIOUS EFFECTS
Professional architects have a thin track record of shaping federal legislation favorable to their interests. The Tarsney Act of 1893 is the rare exception, marking the first time practitioners organized to gain an economic and cultural foothold. But like the Sherman Antitrust Act of three years earlier, the measure ultimately accomplished the opposite…
A CONVERSATION WITH RIO MORALES, ELISA ITURBE, and JESS MYERS: UNIONS AND CLIMATE ACTION
In architecture our workplaces can be very small, and we can have close relationships with the people who manage a project that we work for. The union is not necessarily about bringing in constant antagonism, but recognizing that we should all actually consent to the conditions of work. You’re bringing back this notion of consent, and that is important at so many scales—at the scale of the life of an individual, the life of a worker—but also, it’s what’s at stake right now. So much of the built environment is produced without our consent…
PHILLIP DENNY: CATHEDRAL OF LABOR
Amid the chaos of the postwar era, German artists and architects forged new associations free from the imperial academies and hidebound institutions of the former Wilhelmine system. The Arbeitsrat für Kunst (“Workers’ Council for Art”) was arguably the most influential of the organizations to appear after the war. Established in Berlin in 1918 by architects Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius alongside artist César Klein and critic Adolf Behne, the Arbeitsrat, like other postwar groups throughout Germany, modeled itself after Russian revolutionary “workers’ soviets,” or councils…
We know many people in our architecture community involved in ongoing organizing efforts, and hope these pieces may prove useful to their work.
Would you or your office like to give a birthday gift to NYRA? Contact us at office@nyra.nyc and we can sign you up as a sponsor. Or simply start a new subscription, without using the coupon.
Happy May Day.
NYRA is a team effort. Our deputy editor is Marianela D'Aprile, our editors-at-large are Carolyn Bailey, Phillip Denny and Alex Klimoski, and our publisher is Nicolas Kemper.
To pitch us an article or ask us a question, write to us at: editor@nyra.nyc.
For their support, we would like to thank the Graham Foundation and our issue sponsors, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Thomas Phifer.
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