On Architecture and Work

• Working conditions in the construction industry • Scientists, practitioners and students seek solutions • Third part of the TU Lausanne publication series

Why is architecture so remote from labor struggles, with poorly negotiated labor contracts and barely any self-management models? What possibilities emerge when we acknowledge the glaring class divide between the architectural firm and the construction site? What insights do the stories of workers provide about the construction industry? How do different design practices emerge if designers and construction workers unite?

On Architecture and Work is a collection of essays on the relationship between construction, architecture, work, and labor. From complaints over grueling working conditions on construction sites to demands for better benefits in design offices, asking candidly who can afford to be radical?, this is the third publication in the series The Political Economy of Space , after On Architecture and the Greenfield (2024) an d On Architecture and Greenwashing (2024).

Edited by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, head of the RIOT laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of TechnologyEPFL in Lausanne, this volume updates the discussion on architecture and work by giving answers from construction workers, scholars, and design practitioners.

Inhalt
Cover Halftitle Titlepage Table of Contents The Labor of Building - Charlotte Malterre-Barthes For Solidaristic Practices in Architectural Work - Marisa Cortright An Architecture of Collectivity - Namita Vijay Dharia The Union, the Insurance, and the Workers: Voices from the Construction Site - Carolina Pichler and Lalie Porteret Architecture, Politics, and Self-management: Mutirão as a Transformative Practice - Usina-CTAH with Pedro Fiori Arantes Contributors Acknowledgments Image Credits Impact Evaluation Colophon