Showing posts tagged: practice

Unpaid Architecture Internships Come Under Fire Architecture firms have often relied on unpaid interns, even if some firms don’t exactly advertise the tradition. But after recent lawsuits brought by former interns in other industries, the custom is starting to come under fire in the design world. “You’re expected to intern under an architect, so it’s very important that architects compensate interns fairly,” says Kelly McAlonie, president of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York State chapter. To drive home her point, McAlonie, an architect for the University of Buffalo, emailed a letter to members this fall reminding them that it’s unethical, and possibly illegal, to “exploit workers not only in times of financial boom, but also in times of economic hardship.” Downturns are thought to make employers less likely to pay interns. McAlonie’s letter is believed to be one of the first organized attempts to address an issue that has bedeviled the industry for decades. Still, complaints by interns are rarely publicly leveled. One 26-year-old architecture student who had an unpaid internship in the summer of 2011 agreed to comment for this story, but only if his name wasn’t used. “I don’t want to blacklist myself,” he says. “It’s a very small community, and I don’t want to be known as someone who tattled on these people.” The student worked at a boutique New York firm, and on several occasions, he pulled all-nighters. He was told he might get paid once projects got off the ground, but he was never compensated. “I will never work for free again,” he says.

Unpaid Architecture Internships Come Under Fire

Architecture firms have often relied on unpaid interns, even if some firms don’t exactly advertise the tradition. But after recent lawsuits brought by former interns in other industries, the custom is starting to come under fire in the design world.

“You’re expected to intern under an architect, so it’s very important that architects compensate interns fairly,” says Kelly McAlonie, president of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York State chapter. To drive home her point, McAlonie, an architect for the University of Buffalo, emailed a letter to members this fall reminding them that it’s unethical, and possibly illegal, to “exploit workers not only in times of financial boom, but also in times of economic hardship.” Downturns are thought to make employers less likely to pay interns.

McAlonie’s letter is believed to be one of the first organized attempts to address an issue that has bedeviled the industry for decades. Still, complaints by interns are rarely publicly leveled. One 26-year-old architecture student who had an unpaid internship in the summer of 2011 agreed to comment for this story, but only if his name wasn’t used. “I don’t want to blacklist myself,” he says. “It’s a very small community, and I don’t want to be known as someone who tattled on these people.”

The student worked at a boutique New York firm, and on several occasions, he pulled all-nighters. He was told he might get paid once projects got off the ground, but he was never compensated. “I will never work for free again,” he says.

This crises of architecture’s responsibility for society sowed the seeds for our marginalised position of today. Could we ever be trusted again to enact change on such a grand scale again? The 1980’s and 1990’s saw architects sheepishly retreat to the self-imposed exile of the drawing board, creating ever more abstract and autonomous visions, but not for society, for each other.

Rory Hyde - Future Practice | Conversations from the Edge of Architecture

So it is not so much Le Corbusier who is to blame, but it is the Le Corbusier in us who is to blame. Because if you say that something is a successful city, meaning that you speak about cities as business plans. If it’s in the red it’s a failure, if it’s in the black it’s good. And this is ridiculous! It’s like talking about people as successes or failures depending on how money they make - which of course we actually do - but we don’t think that it’s a good thing.

The Historian of the Present | Wouter Vanstiphout in conversation with Rory Hyde Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture

  • The Architects’s New Atlas by Martti Kalliala and Hans Park The diverse geography of architectural and spatial practice today, with the architectural office as shrinking polar ice cap. The near-collapse of our financial system has had tremendous effects on the architectural profession. The number of unemployed architects worldwide is higher than ever before. This, combined with the fragmentation of the building process into the hands of specialist consultants and the shift from architects being in the service of public to private capital, has made a lot of the work and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to them simply disappear or move to other professional domains. This is why newly graduated architects have difficulties finding jobs that match their education, creative ability or ambition – not to mention the thousands of students facing an increasingly uncertain future.
  • The Architects’s New Atlas by Martti Kalliala and Hans Park The diverse geography of architectural and spatial practice today, with the architectural office as shrinking polar ice cap. The near-collapse of our financial system has had tremendous effects on the architectural profession. The number of unemployed architects worldwide is higher than ever before. This, combined with the fragmentation of the building process into the hands of specialist consultants and the shift from architects being in the service of public to private capital, has made a lot of the work and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to them simply disappear or move to other professional domains. This is why newly graduated architects have difficulties finding jobs that match their education, creative ability or ambition – not to mention the thousands of students facing an increasingly uncertain future.
  • The Architects’s New Atlas by Martti Kalliala and Hans Park The diverse geography of architectural and spatial practice today, with the architectural office as shrinking polar ice cap. The near-collapse of our financial system has had tremendous effects on the architectural profession. The number of unemployed architects worldwide is higher than ever before. This, combined with the fragmentation of the building process into the hands of specialist consultants and the shift from architects being in the service of public to private capital, has made a lot of the work and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to them simply disappear or move to other professional domains. This is why newly graduated architects have difficulties finding jobs that match their education, creative ability or ambition – not to mention the thousands of students facing an increasingly uncertain future.
  • The Architects’s New Atlas by Martti Kalliala and Hans Park The diverse geography of architectural and spatial practice today, with the architectural office as shrinking polar ice cap. The near-collapse of our financial system has had tremendous effects on the architectural profession. The number of unemployed architects worldwide is higher than ever before. This, combined with the fragmentation of the building process into the hands of specialist consultants and the shift from architects being in the service of public to private capital, has made a lot of the work and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to them simply disappear or move to other professional domains. This is why newly graduated architects have difficulties finding jobs that match their education, creative ability or ambition – not to mention the thousands of students facing an increasingly uncertain future.
  • The Architects’s New Atlas by Martti Kalliala and Hans Park The diverse geography of architectural and spatial practice today, with the architectural office as shrinking polar ice cap. The near-collapse of our financial system has had tremendous effects on the architectural profession. The number of unemployed architects worldwide is higher than ever before. This, combined with the fragmentation of the building process into the hands of specialist consultants and the shift from architects being in the service of public to private capital, has made a lot of the work and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to them simply disappear or move to other professional domains. This is why newly graduated architects have difficulties finding jobs that match their education, creative ability or ambition – not to mention the thousands of students facing an increasingly uncertain future.

The Architects’s New Atlas by Martti Kalliala and Hans Park

The diverse geography of architectural and spatial practice today, with the architectural office as shrinking polar ice cap.

The near-collapse of our financial system has had tremendous effects on the architectural profession. The number of unemployed architects worldwide is higher than ever before. This, combined with the fragmentation of the building process into the hands of specialist consultants and the shift from architects being in the service of public to private capital, has made a lot of the work and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to them simply disappear or move to other professional domains. This is why newly graduated architects have difficulties finding jobs that match their education, creative ability or ambition – not to mention the thousands of students facing an increasingly uncertain future.

The world today is defined by a constant state of crises. From environmental degradation, ageing populations, financial instability, natural disasters, housing shortages, global migration, xenophobia, and a growing wealth disparity, to name just a few; our societies are increasingly challenged by systemic issues on an unprecedented scale. All of these crises have spatial consequences that architects are well prepared to confront, and yet instead of diving in, we seem to be having our own crisis:

a crisis of relevance.

Rory Hyde - Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture

The long-term challenge for the architectural profession therefore does not have to do with how to safeguard its share of the market, or how to present itself better to the public, or any such thing. It is to ride this exciting, undisciplined, licentious, and dangerous beast, to control this irresponsible lust for image that pervades our culture. Architecture is a visual thing, and cannot fail to benefit from that unstoppable urge.

Andrew Saint - Architecture as Image: Can we Rein in this New Beast?

A focus on architecture as mere art will tend to marginalize the profession; a focus on architecture as mere fashion will tend to trivialize the profession; and, most dangerous, a focus on architecture as a luxury product that is either unavailable or unnecessary to the majority of people will ultimately destroy the profession.

Elizabeth Padjen - The Shaping of Architectural Practice

What I would argue for, is that our move away from building is not a diversion from architectural practice, it is not an excursion away from the core of what we do — it’s just that we’ve defined the core of what we do in a particular way. I believe what we do is architecture, I believe what we do should be at the core of the profession. That is what the think-tank is about. It’s not to say that these experimental forms of practice in some way down the line inform a more traditional form of practice; that would be privileging the physical building as the central point of what architects do, which I don’t think is right anymore. For us I don’t see a move back into real building as it’s been defined; that is a regression. We need to be much more vocal about staking a claim for these new positions, these new modes of operating as being part of the mainstream. It’s fun to be a young designer talking about alternative forms of practice, but at some point I need to buy a house, I need to have kids, I need to put them through school. I don’t want us to remain on the fringes.

“The Educator of excess | Liam Young/Unknown Fields in conversation with Rory Hyde” in Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture | Rory Hyde | Routledge | 2012

(via urbanlabglobalcities)

Getting it delivered tomorrow

Architectural practice, in short, has become one of the major design problems of our time. While addressing this problem will demand changes in how we practice, it must begin with a redefinition of design. By defining design in the narrowest and most conventional terms, such as giving form to environments or objects, we have created an unnecessary obstacle for ourselves, limiting the application of our knowledge and, not coincidentally, limiting the influence of our discipline.

Thomas Fisher - In the Scheme of Things

Some argue that design cannot be tethered to the clock, that creative ideas do not always come when summoned. But other creative fields - writing and journalism, for example - defy that myth, as their practitioners have learned to create under tight deadlines. Architects must learn to do the same.

Thomas Fisher - In the Scheme of Things

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