S K Y L I N E | 27 | Architecture beyond capitalism
Also: "architecturalish" artworks, designing for justice, and news + events!
Welcome! If someone forwarded you SKYLINE, sign up here to receive it weekly.
Morning, NYRA readers! I hope everyone is drying out after Elsa’s deluge last week. My name is Anna, and I’m your guest editor for today’s Skyline.
In addition to a roundup of architecture news and next week’s events, we’ve got three dispatches for you: Palmyra Geraki is following up with her piece from Skyline 25 with coverage on a series of talks addressing architectural labor under capitalism, Jack Murphy heads across the pond to the latest group exhibition, Namely, Words at London’s Bett’s Project, and finally a dispatch from yours truly on this month’s “Welcome to the Design Justice Network” meeting, which I hope might inspire some of you to get involved with the growing organisation.
-Anna Talley
ISSUE #21 DISTRIBUTION!
We have a new issue! This Wednesday at 7pm we will be distributing the issue at a83, and would like to invite any and all subscribers and their friends to come by, say, hi, have a drink, and - if they like - pick up their issue. Details & Rsvp here.
DISPATCHES
7/3 — Architectural Labor Under Capitalism
On July 3, The Architecture Lobby’s Architecture Beyond Capitalism School (ABC School) hosted a series of presentations and a lively discussion around the theme of Labor as part of its 6-week curriculum, which aims to "critically interrogate the structures and systems of power that have made change difficult within design professions and institutions."
In her talk titled “Spaces of Labor,” LYGIA SABBAG FARES of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research gave a broad introduction of Marxist thought and discussed how our individual and collective values around labor are both formed at familiar places such as the workplace, the home, and the school and shaped by larger forces at play such as colonization, imperialism, and globalization. The duo of RAMNATH BHAT and EKTA MITTAL of Maraa spoke about the plight of migrant laborers in the south of India. Bhat argued that the large infrastructure projects that draw these laborers do not simply materially transform their surroundings but catalyze capital concentration and create new subject positions. Mittal lamented the anonymity and interiority of contract labor and zeroed in on the workers themselves for her brief discussion of one of her short films. In their talk, JESSICA GARCIA FRITZ and FEDERICO GARCIA LAMMERS of LAB-OR and DoArch described how, in both their practice and pedagogy, they consider the production and examination of regulatory and other documents as political acts rather than benign administrative acts. Finally, ASKA WELFORD and KIRTI DURELLE of the United Voices Section of Workers Labor Union in the UK outlined the various modes of worker exploitation in architecture, starting in the studio and extending to the workplace and argued for a strategy of resistance and transformation that emerges directly from an unmediated and empowered workforce. They also offered scenario making as an effective way to turn individual concerns into collective ones and to train new union members through member-led casework. In the Q&A that followed, the school participants challenged the speakers with provocative questions about attitudes toward precarity, the difficult-to-account-for value of creative labor as well as the labor that goes into organizing, the role of institutions, the relationship of the public and private sectors, and the nature of profit.
Labor was the second in a series of three sessions to which the ABC School organisers have dedicated extensive amounts of time and rigorous scholarship. The ABC School's third and final session focusing on Collective Practice will take place starting 17 July.
—Palmyra Geraki
7/7 — Namely, Words, but also Artworks
“I’m getting a bit upset about being connected to architects… I am a painter!” ZOE ZENGHELIS said in a casual Zoom with PHILIP CHRISTOU and INGE VINCK. The call was to discuss their works which appear in part one of the group exhibition Namely, words, on view now at Betts Project in London. (A second part will be installed in the gallery’s new space in the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille next year.) The show asked twelve architects to contribute a drawing or sculpture, accompanied with a text they admire.
Zenghelis’ contribution is mixed-media collage and painting in response to “On This Island” by W.H. Auden. She mused about working with architects, whom she wanted to escape; a bit ironic considering she was a founding member of OMA—many iconic images of the group’s early proposals are her work. Next, Christou shared his contribution, a cardboard construction made from cereal boxes. If Zenghelis’s entry was painterly, Christou’s was at least architecturalish, but really “the only reason for doing it is to be happy,” he said. This related to his selected text, an excerpt from taped interviews with Agnes Martin in which she supplies powerful and mysterious aphorisms like, “The measure of your life is the amount of beauty and happiness of which you are aware.” Christou said the most important thing for him is to be aware of the joy that animates the work.
Vinck’s effort was the closest to architecture. The painting began with drop from a paper model, and its title, Lieve Bloemen, “lovely flowers”, is a mash-up of an actual project’s city and street. Deep green paper is surrounded by a lighter, textured green, and a central expanse of white reads like a platform in a landscape. Vinck selected a poem by Eva Gerlach but read another, which had been translated into English. Shealsoshowed drawings on tiles and stones set up in her office behind her and a series of sketched cityscapes. “We like to draw more and more by hand for competitions,” Vinck said. “It's all about this layering and bringing together a lot of things.” The experiment made me think of its opposite, her Excel drawings done with JAN DE VYLDER during the pandemic. These too were presented with text: “A drawing about something. About something other than just the drawing. About something that exists. That maybe now—again?—can be drawn in a different way.”
The whole meeting was pleasant and hushed, a bohemian respite from the pressing structural crises which animate American architectural discourse.
—Jack Murphy
7/10 — Welcome to Design Justice
This week's "Welcome to the Design Justice Network" meeting began at 8:00 PM ET to the sounds of Bob Marley's greatest hits. The bi-monthly meetings (which rotate to accommodate international time zones) serve as an introduction to the Design Justice Network (DJN), a global organisation that provides support, develops resources, and serves as a community for designers dedicated to shaping their practices around design justice.
Design justice was defined by the speaker and DJN Coordinator VICTORIA BARNETT as "a framework for analysis of how design (of images, interfaces, objects, the built environment, sociotechnical systems) influences the distribution of benefits and burdens between different groups of people." The DJN offers 10 design justice principles, and under this framework, designers consider who was involved, who was harmed, and who benefitted in the creation of a project in an effort to flip conventional design practices, which tend to benefit those who have more power in the process and harm the less powerful at the margins.
Barnett then described the origins of the DJN at the 2015 Allied Media Conference, the current structure of the organisation (which consists of signatories to the DJN principles, a body of monetarily supportive members, a steering committee, working groups, and geographically local nodes), and the DJN's finance model. Making the case for getting involved by describing the organisation's impacts on design education, local workshops, and projects, Barnett linked to the DJN signatory page, the first (free) step in joining the network.
Although it would have been helpful to learn more about the DJN's 10 principles in detail and how these are applied to ongoing projects, the meeting was a helpful starting point for those looking to become involved in a network that champions the kind of design re-education that is foundational to progressive shifts in practice.
-Anna Talley
IN THE NEWS
…in affordable housing developments
…tipping its funky green hat to Patience and Fortitude across the street
the largest circulating branch of the NYPL is reopening with a redesign by Francine Houben
… after tossing out a lawsuit
…adding space for classrooms, galleries, books, and an LGBTQ+ museum
DATELINE
The week ahead
MONDAY, 7/12
Barry Wark: Ancientness and future Forms of Coexistence with Barry Wark, Kristy Balliet
5:00 PM | SCI-Arc
TUESDAY, 7/13
Summer Lecture Series with Kristy Balliet and Sarah Moylan
10:00 AM | UCLA Architecture and Urban DesignRewilding: Nature cannot wait
12:00 PM | Royal Institute of British Architects + VitrA
£4.33 – £7.48
WEDNESDAY, 7/14
PLANS VS. PROJECTS with Joan Busquets
11:30 AM | Columbia GSAPPBeyond Countryside with Samir Bantal
11:30 AM | Columbia GSAPPNYRA #21 Distribution
7:00 PM | New York Review of Architecture at a83Design of Mouldings: Continuum of Precedent & Practice with Stephen Christmas
8:00 - 9:30 PM | Institute of Classical Architecture & Art
Free for ICAA Members $20 General Public
THURSDAY, 7/15
Summer Lecture Series with Keith Berry and Erin Day
10:00 AM | UCLA Architecture and Urban DesignLiving Well: The Cassatts and Their Main Line Houses with Jeff Groff
6:00 PM | Institute of Classical Architecture & Art
SATURDAY 7/17
Architecture Beyond Capitalism School: Collective Practice
4:00 PM | The Architecture Lobby
Free, space limited, advanced registration required
If you would like to write up one of these events—or any others of interest—please get in touch at editor@nyra.nyc.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Want to sound off? Write to us! Link here.
Four desk editors run NYRA: Alex Klimoski, Phillip Denny, Carolyn Bailey & Nicolas Kemper (who also serves as the publisher). They rotate duties each month.
If you want to pitch us an article or ask us a question, write 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.
If you want to support our contributors and receive the Review by post, subscribe here.