Spring:
A Moratorium on New Construction
2024
Fix the Office
EPFL Design Studio BA6, MA2
Course Number AR-302(ah), AR-402 (ah)
“Work, work, work, work, work, work” |1|
Rihanna, “Work,” Ritter / Graham / Brathwaite / Moir / Samuels / Fenty / Thomas © Monte Moir Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
"Fix the Office" examines the way architects produce economic value and how to change the exploitative business model of "the office" toward addressing the social and climate emergency. It explores how architects can design emancipated forms of practice for themselves that then translate into spatial solutions for the ongoing social, ecological, and political crises. n sector is one of the main drivers of raw material extraction and global warming, and as direct or indirect consequences, generates relentless environmental and social destruction. Researching power dynamics in design offices, financial and legal frameworks of the profession, honoraria and billing schemes, liberal constricts, and labor conditions, this studio is curious to uncover the causality between operative ways and built work. How does the functioning of an office, its business model, its economic status, and institutional framework impact the architecture it generates, and how to edit these structures to achieve a non-extractive architecture?
Another underlying agenda is to educate ourselves on the economic system that underpins the production of space, aiming to illuminate the division of labor and class created between intellectual design workers in the office and the manual and executive labor force on site, as well as unpacking questions of land and material value against labor organization. Unions, negotiated labor contracts, self-management models, resistance movements, and workers empowerment initiatives will be useful tools to think about challenging existing power structures. So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construction can neng needs? This studio intends to face the music. So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construc Candidly addressing ‘who can afford to be radical,’ the studio seeks what are the possible ways outside of accumulative economies, learning from past and present resistant labor movements and what such structures entail for building and architectural design? As a design task, once understanding alternative ways of ‘not being an office’ is better outlined, we will think about emergent forms of world-making that diverge from the status quo. While this topic can come across as introverted, navel-gazing and slightly insular, the studio (and RIOT at large) believes it is essential to engage with uncomfortable questions about what is the value of architecture. This is a necessary work to challenge why our discipline is at the heart of the profit-generating machine of construction despite its mandate of sheltering humanity and serving the common good.
Nota Bene: This studio is part of the ‘Moratorium on New Construction’ cycle, one of RIOT’s meta agenda, following a series of topics seeking to center systemic change in architecture and the building industry. This means the class will prioritize radical designs that engage with repair, remediation, care, tactical interventions, system design and policy making, and interrogate architecture as the sole ‘art of building buildings.’ Architecture is here at the forefront, considered as a powerful tool for change, if and when it is used as such. In this case, architecture is asked to scrutinize its own functioning toward larger power shifts.
|1| Rihanna, “Work,” Ritter / Graham / Brathwaite / Moir / Samuels / Fenty / Thomas © Monte Moir Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
|2| Image Credit: Image by Don McPhedran, 1963 for the Australian Photographic Agency, via the State Library, NSW. [B] The Drafting Office, 1963 Architects’ drafting office during construction of the Sydney Opera House, 1963
Teaching Team: Antoine Iweins, Kathlyn Kao; TA: Laure Melati Dekoninick
Spring:
A Moratorium on New Construction
2024
Fix the Office
EPFL Design Studio BA6, MA2
Course Number AR-302(ah), AR-402 (ah)
“Work, work, work, work, work, work”
Rihanna, “Work,” Ritter / Graham / Brathwaite / Moir / Samuels / Fenty / Thomas © Monte Moir Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
"Fix the Office" examines the way architects produce economic value and how to change the exploitative business model of "the office" toward addressing the social and climate emergency. It explores how architects can design emancipated forms of practice for themselves that then translate into spatial solutions for the ongoing social, ecological, and political crises. n sector is one of the main drivers of raw material extraction and global warming, and as direct or indirect consequences, generates relentless environmental and social destruction. Researching power dynamics in design offices, financial and legal frameworks of the profession, honoraria and billing schemes, liberal constricts, and labor conditions, this studio is curious to uncover the causality between operative ways and built work. How does the functioning of an office, its business model, its economic status, and institutional framework impact the architecture it generates, and how to edit these structures to achieve a non-extractive architecture?
Another underlying agenda is to educate ourselves on the economic system that underpins the production of space, aiming to illuminate the division of labor and class created between intellectual design workers in the office and the manual and executive labor force on site, as well as unpacking questions of land and material value against labor organization. Unions, negotiated labor contracts, self-management models, resistance movements, and workers empowerment initiatives will be useful tools to think about challenging existing power structures. So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construction can neng needs? This studio intends to face the music. So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construc Candidly addressing ‘who can afford to be radical,’ the studio seeks what are the possible ways outside of accumulative economies, learning from past and present resistant labor movements and what such structures entail for building and architectural design? As a design task, once understanding alternative ways of ‘not being an office’ is better outlined, we will think about emergent forms of world-making that diverge from the status quo. While this topic can come across as introverted, navel-gazing and slightly insular, the studio (and RIOT at large) believes it is essential to engage with uncomfortable questions about what is the value of architecture. This is a necessary work to challenge why our discipline is at the heart of the profit-generating machine of construction despite its mandate of sheltering humanity and serving the common good.
Nota Bene: This studio is part of the ‘Moratorium on New Construction’ cycle, one of RIOT’s meta agenda, following a series of topics seeking to center systemic change in architecture and the building industry. This means the class will prioritize radical designs that engage with repair, remediation, care, tactical interventions, system design and policy making, and interrogate architecture as the sole ‘art of building buildings.’ Architecture is here at the forefront, considered as a powerful tool for change, if and when it is used as such. In this case, architecture is asked to scrutinize its own functioning toward larger power shifts.
|1| Image Credit: ETH Bild Archive
Teaching Team: Antoine Iweins, Kathlyn Kao; TA: Laure Melati Dekoninick
BP 3239, Station 16, CH-1015 Lausanne / T: +41 21 693 00 53 / E: riot@epfl.ch / IG: @riot-epfl
© 2023, RIOT EPFL ENAC