From Redlines – Overworked and Undervalued: A Series of Traumatic Experiences In Architecture

01/02/24 • 64 min

We're taking a break from Tangents this week for the holidays so we wanted to share with you the latest episode from Redlines, Out of Architecture's podcast where we dive deeper into the core issues that plague the design profession, and evaluate how they result in everyday conflict, discomfort, and workplace turmoil.

You'll hear from Chris (not his real name) and how he faced a series of traumatic and unfair experiences over the course of his architecture career. Despite his lifelong passion for architecture, Chris dealt with difficult bosses, excessive overwork, sexual harassment, lack of appreciation, and ultimately wrongful dismissal. His story highlights the need for positive change in architecture's problematic power dynamics, management issues, and lack of work-life balance.

Find out more about Redlines here
Or listen to the rest of Tangents here

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Find out more about Redlines here
Or listen to the rest of Tangents here

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Previous Episode

Challenging Traditional Architecture with Intelligent City’s Kristin Slavin

Ever feel traditional architecture moves too slowly to tackle crises like housing shortages?

Our latest guest Kristin set out to transform delivery for faster, quality sustainable housing. Her winding path from design into development, prefab and product led her to a mass timber housing startup reimagining solutions.

We cover:

Kristin's career from architecture to a hands-on developer role empowering new mass timber construction
Transitioning into modular construction and product development at a tech startup
Now leading product design for a prefab mass timber housing company scaling impact
Belief that systematizing architecture can enable more creative freedom
Advice for architects to explore adjacent roles like development and technology

In our latest episode we understand how Kristin took control over her career, how she's shaping

the future of housing delivery at her mass timber startup, and her advice for how you can diversify your skills and have more impact as a designer.

Guest Bio:
Kristin Slavin is an expert and thought leader in mass timber construction and low carbon building design, which has led to an impactful, if unconventional, career path in product development. Her extensive experience as an architect, developer, and product manager of mass timber buildings and prefabricated building products has helped drive national building code changes and an industry wide shift to more sustainable building practices. Her built work includes Carbon12, the tallest CLT building in the US at completion. At Intelligent City, Kristin leads the development of the architectural design platform, building typologies, interior design, and building systems accessories, enabling a broad set of solutions for clients from a consistent technology platform. Her goal is to create high quality, low impact, cost effective building solutions using mass timber in a repeatable, systematized way.

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Next Episode

The Future of Architecture: Shifting Towards Social and Ecological Justice with FAF’s Charlie Edmonds

Our guest, Charlie Edmonds, Co-Founder of Future Architects Front, calls for collective action to address exploitative practices and envisions a world where architecture prioritizes social needs over capital interests.

Charlie is the co-founder of Future Architects Front (FAF), a grassroots organization working to address issues like unpaid overtime, low fees, and poor construction quality in the architecture industry.

Charlie discusses how he and co-founder Priti became frustrated with the exploitative conditions in architecture and started FAF to advocate for wider political and economic shifts to prioritize social and ecological needs over capital interests.

He shares how FAF takes a systems view to trace architecture's problems back to neoliberal policies, and says the Covid pandemic helped reveal many of these flawed structures. Charlie believes organizing labor collectively is key to creating change, and worker unions have historically been powerful forces in achieving better conditions.

Highlights:

The architecture industry has endemic issues like unpaid overtime, low fees, and poor construction quality.
These problems can be traced back to neoliberal policies that prioritized profits over social needs.
The pandemic exposed many flaws in work practices and productivity beliefs.
Collective labor organizing through unions is a powerful way to create societal change.
Architectural skills like visualization can be useful tools for political and social justice campaigns.
Solidarity is a crucial concept in driving collective action and working towards a more equitable and sustainable future.

Further Reading/Info:

Guest Bio:

Charlie is a London-based designer and writer working across the fields of architecture, climate transition, and political economy. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge where he co-founded Future Architects Front with Priti Mohandas. Charlie is a systems designer at CIVIC SQUARE in Birmingham where he works to demonstrate the necessity for a devolved urban climate transition.Through FAF and CIVIC SQUARE, Charlie’s work seeks to establish emergent forms of anti-capitalist organising situated within the (re)production of the built environment.

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