Positioning the director of an architecture practice as the solo creative genius enables them to get away with “basically running a bad business”, says Architecture Lobby Victorian chapter steward Frank Burridge.
“We think that architects being a solo genius is a kind of phenomenon or an attitude that supports a lot of the really bad labour practices in architecture,” he says.
Aside from denying credit to the whole team, Burridge says the practice can also lead to exploitation.
“(The director) can come up with some crazy, far-fetched idea two days before a proposal is due to a client and then shaft some junior worker with actually putting that idea on paper and making something that you can legitimately present to a client.”
Speaking to
ADR, Burridge says young architects, in particular, are vulnerable to unfair working conditions like these because they feel they’re to be expected.
“That attitude is a symptom of the strange way architecture is suspended,” he says.
“On the one hand, it’s an industry, so it has to have labour relations, and on the other hand, architects see themselves as artists. So suffering for their art, working really long hours, not getting paid for it. All of those things are part of a process of producing beauty. That’s what they think.”
The Architecture Lobby is an international
not-for-profit organisation of architectural workers advocating for the value of architecture in the general public and for architectural work within the discipline.
It was founded in 2013 in New York City, and now has 16 chapters across the United States. The Victorian Lobby is its
only international chapter, started by Burridge in 2018, in part, because of his friends’ experiences in the industry.
“All of my friends that graduated at the same time as me (from a Bachelor of Architecture) got jobs and I just saw these beautiful, creative people getting ground down by their jobs.
“They were working from eight in the morning until 10 at night regularly, five days a week. They were working weekends. Many of them lost their spark and their zest for life and that was really sad to see.”
Demystifying the architect as the solo genius is one of the 10 “demands” outlined in the
Architecture Lobby Manifesto.
The primary focus is to enforce labour laws that prohibit unpaid internships, unpaid overtime and unpaid competitions.
The US chapters are also engaged in a campaign to establish a union, something the Victorian Lobby thought was also necessary for Australian practitioners at its first chapter meeting.
“Everyone piped up and said, ‘Why don’t we have a union? This is terrible.’ And a delegate for the National Tertiary Education Union who was at the meeting put up his hand and said, ‘Actually we do have a union and it’s called the
Professional Architects of Australia‘,” says Burridge.
“And everyone was shocked. No one had heard of this union before and no one we have spoken to this year had heard of them either.”
Disconcerted, the Victorian Lobby has begun working with the
Professional Architects of Australia to raise its profile and better assist those in the industry.
The efforts are part of what Burridge says are positive actions that aim to “make things better for all architectural workers.
“We don’t just call out or heckle firms that are doing the wrong thing.
We make an effort to elevate and support those doing the right things.”
Article by Elisa Scarton
First published on
Australian design review