The latest instalment of our series of AR Reading Lists: seven carefully chosen pieces from our archive, free for registered users
As much of the world celebrates International Workers’ Day, The Architectural Review considers the spatial dimensions of labour, whether they be the conditions under which the architectural profession designs, constructs and maintains buildings, or the work that takes place within. The architect is in the unique and privileged position of being able to shape the working environments of others – factories, offices, farms and other workspaces – with profound implications across intersections of class, disability, racialisation and gender. Yet, within the profession itself, a culture of precarity, overwork and alienation also prevails. The reading list below explores the histories of how architectural labour has operated over time, and gestures towards ways in which it can be organised differently.
The articles below are free for registered users to read for a limited time. Happy reading, and happy International Workers’ Day!
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Reputations: Karl Marx (1818–1883), AR February 2023, Owen Hatherley
‘Automation might be founded on capitalism, but it creates the material conditions to blow this foundation sky‑high’
Play the system: labour, leisure and normal life, AR April 2021, Smith Mordak
‘You can pay workers a fraction of their value because they have no choice but to accept the terrible deal’
The architect and the workhouse, AR December 1976, Anna Dickens
‘Attitudes to the poor were gradually changing – there was a growing feeling that poverty, particularly among the aged, was not a crime’
Pillars of society: building Mexico City’s community centres, AR February 2023, Tania Tovar Torres
‘With carefully designed centres completed on time and on budget, no one seemed to notice the system of precarious labour that the architects were subscribing to’
Waging war: pay for domestic labour, AR September 2019, Edwina Attlee
‘If housework is understood as somehow beneath some people then no architecture can undo this hierarchy’
Structural issues: the cost of material and the value of labour, AR June 2021, Steve Webb
‘Labour is heavily taxed but materials for new buildings are hardly taxed at all’
Typology: Factories, AR November 2015, Tom Wilkinson
‘Rumblings of discontent led to nonconformist industrialists reforming factory work, now widely seen as degrading and risking unrest’
