On Architecture and Work

Why is architecture so remote from labor struggles, with poorly negotiated labor contracts and barely any self-management models? What possibilities emerge when we acknowledge the glaring class divide between the architectural firm and the construction site? What insights do the stories of workers provide about the construction industry? How do different design practices emerge if designers and construction workers unite? 

On Architecture and Work is a collection of essays on the relationship between construction, architecture, work, and labor. From complaints over grueling working conditions on construction sites to demands for better benefits in design offices, asking candidly “who can afford to be radical?”, this is the third publication in the series The Political Economy of Space, after On Architecture and the Greenfield (2024) and On Architecture and Greenwashing (2024).

Edited by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, head of the RIOT laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology—EPFL in Lausanne, this volume updates the discussion on architecture and work by giving answers from construction workers, scholars, and design practitioners.