The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative Class, and the Politics of Design

By Peggy Deamer

Book Overview

Directly confronting the nature of contemporary architectural work, this book is the first to address a void at the heart of architectural discourse and thinking. For too long, architects have avoided questioning how the central aspects of architectural "practice+? (professionalism, profit, technology, design, craft, and building) combine to characterize the work performed in the architectural office. Nor has there been a deeper evaluation of the unspoken and historically-determined myths that assign cultural, symbolic, and economic value to architectural labor.

The Architect as Worker presents a range of essays exploring the issues central to architectural labor. These include questions about the nature of design work; immaterial and creative labor and how it gets categorized, spatialized, and monetized within architecture; the connection between parametrics and BIM and labor; theories of architectural work; architectural design as a cultural and economic condition; entrepreneurialism; and the possibility of ethical and rewarding architectural practice.

The book is a call-to-arms, and its ultimate goal is to change the practice of architecture. It will strike a chord with architects, who will recognize the struggle of their profession; with students trying to understand the connections between work, value, and creative pleasure; and with academics and cultural theorists seeking to understand what grounds the discipline.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1472570502
• ISBN13: 9781472570505
• Release Date: September 2015
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 9.3"