In The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerization, Michael Osborne and Carl Frey examined the impact of automation on the US labor market, ranking 702 occupations by their likelihood of being replaced by machines. Telemarketers, hand sewers, and tax preparers ranked at 702 with a 99% probability of automation. Architects, however, were ranked 78 (Architectural and Engineering Managers), 82 (Architects, Except Landscape and Naval), and 305 (Architectural and Civil Drafters), indicating a lower risk of replacement.¹

The evolution of labor structure in architecture reflects the shift in economical, social, and technological dynamics. In the medieval times, master builders oversaw the entire construction projects combining design and construction within a guild system and these guilds regulated wages, training and working conditions to the profession. The Renaissance separated design from construction, elevating architects as intellectual professionals while the builders became laborers for physical construction.² By the 19th century, industrialization and universities reduced apprenticeships in favor of formal university training. Organizations such as the AIA and the NCARB are set up to advocate the profession and create rules and standards to ensure public safety. In parallel, key events throughout history such as the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act) of 1935, and the AIA Antitrust Lawsuit of 1972 have heavily impacted the profession. These events influenced how architects produce designs, their ability to unionize, negotiate wages, demand better working conditions, and set market-driven pricing, altering the labor economics of the profession.

Today, advancements in technology hold great power in transforming the dynamics of labor structure in the profession by rearrangement the ways we collaborate. Artificial Intelligence and Building Information Modeling (BIM) can streamline collaboration and improve efficiency, but the architecture and construction industries continue to move at a slower pace due to a persistent “failure to embrace deep collaboration,”³ and remain resistant to full automation. Given the accessibility and growing potential of technological automation, should we maintain the profession’s traditional hierarchical pyramid structure or break from it to redefine how we collaborate? How do we move from the “Cathedral” model in which a small team controls most decisions to the “Bazaar” approach that relies on decentralized cross disciplinary collaboration requires us to rethink power structures and communication across different expertise?⁴ Adopting a hive mind architectural network involves flattening organizational structures, redistributing responsibility along with the associated risks and rewards and fostering mutual trust other specialties. If the architect is “neither a fixed entity nor limited to any singular archetypal figure but rather is a collective body of knowledge and individual problem-solving ingenuity; a form of mediating agency, still subject to ongoing reinvention within changing times and cultural constraints,”⁵ then we too can adapt our labor structure to thrive in the age of AI.  Technology can shape labor but it alone will not bring this change. If architects want to take on more responsibility and increase adaptability, can we rethink new ways of working together to foster and redesign a labor culture that values transparency and shared ownership rather than authority based on the current status quo?

Who is the first person to be professionally trained as anarchitect?

Antonia da Sagallo the Younger… TBD.

In an economy of goods and services, architects provide a service. The profession as a product of practice has become more removed from the product of the building than ever before. This is important for several reasons. The public perception of the architect as a provider of services rather than goods means that there is a level of abstraction in what a client pays for.¹ In addition, the growing distance between design and construction creates barriers between professions and limits collaboration in the ultimate delivery of a project. Among the vast modes of practice within the field of architecture, there are alternative project delivery methods that seek to provide a more tangible service such as design-build—a collapsing of the “service” of the architect and the “good” of the constructor and fabricator.

It is indisputable that buildings will only get more complicated over time. The Empire State Building took 13 months to build, whereas One World Trade Center took 7 years. In parallel, cost overruns and lawsuits continue to plague the construction industry.² The adversarial relationship between the architect, the engineer, and the contractor is costly and counterproductive. By way of their contracted territorial delineations, each professional body has a different measure of project success, is insured by a separate liability policy,³ and is supported by its own professional association, ultimately interested in shedding risk and protecting profit. The traditional design-bid-build scheme of segregated services also draws a clear line between the design and construction phases. The contractor, the presumed expert on construction, is thus excluded from design. Drawings reflect tectonic conditions that dictate an order of operations, which should be informed by material procurement, construction methods, and labor. It is clear that we must revise our conventional professional relationships and project delivery methodologies in order to deal with the further complexities that lie ahead.

The original separation of the architect and the constructor of a building occurred in the 15th century, during which demand for classical architecture was on the rise. Vitruvius wrote in Latin, a language understood only by the wealthier scholarly class. Builders and tradespeople were typically of a lower social class, making Vitruvius’ books inaccessible. Where builders were once the designers of their own creations, the Renaissance brought about an era where architects were seen as intellectuals, responsible for interpreting the writings and buildings of the masters and directing the lowly work of the builders.⁴ This intellectual divide persists, and the industry and the academy are both responsible for reconciling the growing contempt.

1. Industry: Design-build and integrated project delivery offer models of design and construction where the participating parties have shared interests and goals, working to promote cooperation and collaboration between the architect and the contractor.
2. Academy: Where the Bauhaus sought to bring together the trades and the fine arts, modern architectural education must convene architecture, engineering, and construction through shared coursework and active intellectual exchange.

1. Medina, “John Portman Is a ‘Renaissance Architect,’ Says Harvard GSD’s Mohsen Mostafavi.” In an interview by Metropolis with Mohnsen Mostafavi and Jack Portman (John Portman’s son), Mostafavi is critical of the profession for how “easily [it] falls within the realm of the service sector.” Portman’s involvement in the development of his projects empowered him to have more agency in the materialization of his ideas. Greg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects echoes similar sentiments in an interview with Architect Magazine but in the form of design-build, engaging with the process of construction to preserve design intent.
2. FMI Corproation, “2023 FMI Labor Productivity Study.” FMI Corporation is a consulting firm that issues annual and quarterly reports on the construction industry. Their Labor Productivity Study points to low-quality construction documents and poor communication as leading causes of losses in productivity.
3. Jackson, Design-Build Essentials. The Miller Act of 1935 made it mandatory for construction companies to post two surety bonds on federal projects. Architecture offices do not deal in such large sums of capital, and are thus not included in this law. As Jackson writes, this excluded the architect from activities of construction. Insurance and liability are extremely important aspects of the construction industry today as offices across the board are faced with a great deal of financial risk.
4. Trachtenberg, Building in Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion. Alberti was born into a wealthy family, as are most intellectuals past and present. He thus had access to Vitruvius’ writings. Builders and tradespeople of the Renaissance–its manual laborers–however, did not have the privilege of an elite education, and were thus relegated to a social status subaltern to that of the “architect,” an intellectual capable of interpreting the writings and buildings of antiquity.

The structure of the architecture labor market has seen little change in the last century. Exacerbated by continued de-risking and de-valuing of the profession, exploitation of labor, toxic work culture, and a misalignment of worker/firm incentives continue to plague the industry. As a professional service, the fundamental value of architecture firms is in their talent, yet the power dynamics are skewed strongly in favor of firm owners with workers having little agency and reward structures for the labor they provide.

In the last several years, two things have happened. First, the pandemic has shown the world that remote work is possible and, in some cases, more efficient. Second, the industry is undergoing a social revolution with workers in the industry voicing their protests against social and workplace inequities.

Thus, supported by developments in decentralized networks, the architecture labor market is positioned to undergo a major transformation in the next three decades, first to a gig economy and then to a decentralized ownership economy.

Under such ownership model, architects are able to work independently under a user-owned network which provides shared:

• Business development/marketing – access to projects and clients;
• Resources – insurance, software, tools;
• Flexibility – ability to choose one’s projects; and
• Ownership – redistribution of value and governance.

This model shifts leverage from the firm owners to the workers, enabling them to not only capture a larger portion of the value they produce, but also make decisions on the types of projects they engage and how they work. This model also benefits clients, increasing access to talent and thereby reducing costs and inefficiencies.

Some of the scenarios that this model enables:

• Reducing barriers to collaboration – multiple sole practitioners, small firms, and consultants with flexible engagements for collaborating on projects.
• Democratized value chain between clients, investors, architects, consultants, and contractors.
• Blockchain enabled ownership in projects.

LEED, whose initial iteration was launched in 1998, served as a major turning point for the construction industry. It is the most widely used and well-recognized green building rating system around the world, born out of the green movement that blew up in the 60’s. Although LEED was born from without the architectural discipline, it has impacted the field immensely, both metrically and culturally—both in practice and academia.

With its implementation, LEED has brought about new innovations and trends in design, construction, and in the operation of built or renovated spaces. An increase in attention to human health in relation to architecture, in resilience, and in leveraging building performance data because of the rating system has all in all shifted the mindsets of many architects.

During this semester, the investigation of LEED as an inflection point for the value system within architecture was studied as a starting point to a larger topic, which our group eventually investigated: the idea that both practice and academia purportedly change their value systems around questions of material cycles and environment, yet insisting upon their own hyperfocused, narrow platforms of operation and education. On the one hand, technological integration has permanently embedded empirical thought within practice, yet a newly trained architect may not seem to notice how all design processes are measured as an act of environmental consumption. On the other, the Academy maintains the illusion of cultural production against the pervasion of data. LEED, born from outside architecture, may have fueled the fire for how the building industry could change, but it did not adequately integrate how its new value system could manifest and bring together a distinct subset of codes, competition systems, standards, and nor ultimately marry the values in academia and practice. Within the realm of LEED, architecture may be the subject and certification may be the product, yet the rating system itself reads to many practitioners and academics as an external body. To what extent is LEED something that we produce versus something we comply with? Is LEED a product of practice of is it a compliance report, and what should it be?

The state in which architects currently practice [in 2022] is often traced to a myriad of occurrences – post-war era standardization, late capitalism (commodification), external real estate market forces, among others. Pinpointing published knowledge disseminated across the profession, the role of education leading up to practicing, and disruption-causing events gives way to why we are the way we are, how we feel about it, and what we can do about it.

Former AIA President Frank Miles Day assumes chairmanship of the AIA’s Committee on Contract and Specifications in 1914 and is especially interested in establishing a code of ethics, conduct of design competitions, competitive bidding procedures, and the standardization of contracts between and among owners, architects, and builders in an effort to elevate the Architect’s status alongside doctors and lawyers (Johnston, 2020). This incentive is fulfilled through his Handbook of Architectural Practice, of which includes office structure not only in terms of an office’s layout (inner and outer, movement of internal staffing versus visitors such as clients/contractors) but also the written expectations of the architect in relationship to her responsibilities to the owner. At the same time, a fictitious “Thumtack” also appears, a pseudonym for architect Frederick Squires, as a method to “prick the bubbles” of the profession through humor - social pretentions, professional stereotypes, mistaken identities – publicizing anecdotes and grievances that occur between architects and clients. These sources complemented each other in their respective timeframe, projecting concerns about professionalization from within.

Numerous authors looked to the largest firms of the early 20th century to comprehend implications of team-based practices for post-war architectural production (Kubo, 2014).  Henry-Russell Hitchcock, American architectural historian, predicted the major categories of the “Architecture of Bureaucracy” and the “Architecture of Genius” in his 1947 article. Hitchcock states postwar architecture would be distinguished “not by style, but by economy of production,” in which a new professional entity would meet the increasing scale and scope of design tasks – “the bureaucratic office.” This model can be seen in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, founded in 1936, Nathaniel Owings states, “we were not after jobs as such. We were after leverage to influence social and environmental conditions. To work, we must have volume…volume meant power.” Another model can be described through The Architects Collaborative (TAC), founded in 1945, of which included Gropius, who led the Bauhaus and later the Harvard GSD). The team is described as generalists able to critique each other’s work rather than parceling out tasks. Gropius’ argument was collaboration across disciplines would “allow architecture to recover the ideal of integration represented by the pre-industrial figure of the master builder in context of postwar industrial society” (Kubo, 2014). An interdisciplinary way of working, thus, became a new ideal to replace the title of Master Builder, in so doing, the spirit of anonymity and team-based ethos reigned for the efforts of collaboration, and furthers the professed squandering of an architect’s agency.

Looking to our current ‘post’-COVID state, SCI-Arc’s Basecamp: ‘How to be in an Office’’s recent virality (just three weeks ago) so obviously declares the state of an exploitative industry that begins even prior to practicing, along with SHoP dropping Architectural Workers United’s unionization bid, - for the sake of the work, for the sake of name, for the sake of an accepted culture. The infamy attached to the recording expresses working conditions of management and labor - Peggy Deamer, architectural educator and founding member of the Architecture Lobby, asserts in her article “(Un)Free Work: Architecture, Labour and Self-Determination” that “for us architects, freedom,” here interpreted as agency, “is illusive not because it is ambiguous, contradictory or uncontested, but because it is an abstraction. In other words, it is not that we cannot agree on a definition of freedom or that we cannot trust in its possibility; rather, as long as it is not experienced, it is unknowable.” Deamer argues that the content of a practice’s work is fundamentally transformed beginning from the workplace.

This brings me to the topic of Worker-Cooperatives as future alternates for small practices. In sharing the basic resources of financing, administration, PR, HR, consultants, and of the like, this mode of profession envisages a collectivity in not only making the work happen, but also allowing those producing the work ownership stakes and freedom of choice in terms of what is made.