The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative Class, and the Politics of Design
Brand: Bloomsbury Academic
Categories: Books, Arts & Photography, Architecture



Dimensions: 6.22 x 0.49 x 9.31 inches
ISBN-13: 978-1472570499
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1472570499
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Print length: 296 pages
Publication date: September 10, 2015
author: Peggy Deamer
review: Editorial Reviews Review This landmark volume will jumpstart conversations that are long overdue in the world of architecture. Its contributors help us understand the profession's blind spot about labor while generating sharp insights on a full range of fundamental questions: Who constructs the buildings? Who renders the designs? Who gets paid, and who doesn't? (Andrew Ross, New York University, USA and author of Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times) Compared to endless speculations about the implications of digital technologies for architecture, almost no attention has been given to the much more fundamental question of architecture's relationship to recent changes in the structural organisation of labour. The Architect as Worker is a pioneering investigation of this topical but as yet little discussed issue. Drawing upon new theories of labour and of the development of the 'knowledge economy' - in particular Maurizio Lazzarato's concept of immaterial labour - these essays set out an agenda for us to consider what kind of work architecture might be under present day conditions. (Adrian Forty, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK) The Architect as Worker is completely relevant to understanding the architect's current professional and political predicament. At once historical, theoretical, practical and clear-eyed, it should start urgent conversations across the design disciplines, not just architecture. (Simon Sadler, University of California, Davis, USA) Architects, students, academics-workers of all kinds-concerned with the question of how the fragmented, homogenized, financialized, blind field that is architecture can simultaneously exploit and allow us to produce new forms of knowledge, need this book. It represents a point of departure for research and a call to act. (Nick Beech, Oxford Brookes University, UK) Book Description With contributions from both architectural practice and theory, this anthology is the first to explore the nature of the work that professional architects perform in practice. About the Author Peggy Deamer is Professor of Architecture and Assistant Dean at Yale University, USA, and a visiting scholar at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. Read more