Book Review - Peggy Dreamer - Architect as Worker

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Peggy Deamer (Ed.) The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative Class and the Politics of Design.

SID: 440390053

2015. London: New Delhi: Bloomsbury

It is an all too familiar scene. I sit on the couch with my partner at 9pm on a Friday night, each with a take away container in hand. The illusion that either of us will be home earlier enough to cook a meal has been overreached by several hours and we eat in an exhausted silence. A wry smile on both of our faces acknowledges that an architect’s close of business differs from the universal definition. As I have many times before, I have mentally calculated that after nearly five years at university, and the accumulation of significant debt in the process, I am now earning the near equivalent as what I was earning over a decade ago in my early twenties at my local Bunnings. At the mention of this I usually receive a quizzical look, followed not by the question, but rather a statement, “But you love what you do – maybe just not how its done”.

Peggy Deamer’s poignant book Architect as Worker challenges us to address this concern; to reconsider not only the way in which we work, but also the manner in which we conceptualise the process of work. Architect as Worker consolidates Deamer’s research at Yale University in the still-lagging effects of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The edited book follows two previous volumes including her earlier Architecture and Capitalism (2013) and Building (in) the future: recasting Labor in Architecture (2010) that predefine the post-Fordist economic and social structures in which our profession is entrenched. The edited book is a collection of 17 essays, responses, case studies and narratives and although the chapters are not responsive to one another they each offer a different entry point to the polemic exploration of protocols and practices that frame the labor of architectural design and construction. The perspectives within the book traverse broader issues from the definition and value of immaterial labor to professionspecific speculation, to proposing new business models. Deamer’s key argument that traverses many of the essays is that architectural labor needs to be reconceptualised as work. Subject to this is understanding that our work is part of a larger global economy and although distinct, is collaborative not only with other workers, but also clients and institutions. Until we understand and embrace our economic place this we cannot be in a position of power or authority to affect change within the discipline or to global labor conditions.


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Book Review - Peggy Dreamer - Architect as Worker by katereardon - Issuu