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:

• Future Architects Front (FAF)
• Death to the Calling by Marisa Cortwright 
• All Design Is Political, Not All Politics Is Design by Leijia Hanrahan
• The Funambulist Magazine
• The Architecture Lobby
• Architectural Workers United

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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Creators & Guests

Host

Silvia Lee

Host of Tangents

Guest

Charlie Edmonds

Co-Founder of Future Architects Front

Producer

Erin Pellegrino

Co-Founder of Out of Architecture

Producer

Jake Rudin

Co-Founder of Out of Architecture

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The Future of Architecture: Shifting Towards Social and Ecological Justice with Future Architects Front's Charlie Edmonds
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Charlie: [00:00:00] We would kind of pull that thread and the thread would always lead back to larger political economic conditions. ~So, you know, to give you an example we would critique unpaid overtime practice owners would then tell us that unpaid overtime is because of low fees. We then learned that low fees was because of the loss of fixed fees~~ ~~under Thatcher and then the kind of process of neoliberalism, meaning that there's this sort of~~ ~~race to the bottom and who can charge the lowest fee to win work. And then you get back to the wider impacts of neoliberalism, which you can kind of see has created this race to the bottom effect, not just in architecture, but in, you know, almost all aspects of socially useful production. ~

Charlie: So we've now got to a point where our sort of critique of architecture isn't really bounded by disciplinary lines, but architecture is more of a~ you know, ~medium through which you can make kind of larger critiques and organize at larger scale towards more fundamental shifts in the political economy~ in order to~~ ~~prioritize social and ecological need ahead of the needs of, or the interests of capital. ~

Silvia: Welcome to Tangents by Out of Architecture. Out of Architecture is a career consulting firm helping designers apply their incredible talents in untraditional ways. We're highlighting some of our favorite stories from the amazing people we've met along the way. We will hear how they created a unique career path for themselves from the wide variety of skills and talents they developed in and out of architecture.

Silvia: Our guest today is Charlie Edmonds. [00:01:00] Co-founder of future architects front. Here, how Charlie is calling for collective action and a complete re-imagining of architecture's role in society. We'll learn about the power of labor, organizing skills that can drive change and what it means to prioritize people over profits. Thank you for listening, and I hope you feel encouraged by the impact you can make in creating a better future.

Silvia: Nice to have you on our podcast. to get started, our favorite question, how would you describe yourself in three words?

Charlie: Stubborn, hopeful and, stubborn.

Silvia: Ooh, okay. I can't wait to hear it. And what is your background in architecture?

Charlie: so I did, my sort of part one and part two, which is the, ~you know, ~undergrad and master's, qualifications here in the UK. I finished my master's in Cambridge in 2020. And then from that point with Priti Mahandas, I co founded Futuroptics Front.

Charlie: And then I also started working for a group called civic square who are [00:02:00] a sort of civic and climate infrastructure lab. And so I ~sort of ~around that time, I suppose, departed from the traditional root qualification. But, ~you know, ~I still have a lot of connection to I suppose, more traditional architecture through FAF, but also through my teaching, because I'm also a critical practice tutor at the London School of Architecture at the moment.

Silvia: And can you share with our listeners a little more about Future Architects Front and the work you're currently

Charlie: doing? Yeah, of course. So, basically Future Architects Front, or FAF, as I Enjoy calling it more 'cause it's a fun acronym. Was essentially a group that was born out of lockdown in the uk and also born out of a kind of common frustration that the co-founder pretty and myself had with the state of the architecture profession in particularly in the uk.

Charlie: so, ~you know, ~we had basically just done this master's degree, which was all about. Really leaning into the research and really leaning into the kind of [00:03:00] structures that underpin the production of the built environment in loads of different contexts. And moving from that to applying to traditional practices was a bit like a sort of almost cruel experiment in.

Charlie: Understanding why all of these problems exist through your masters and then moving straight into the systems that are suffering from and perpetuating those problems. So essentially, we kind of created FAF as a way of trying to. address some of these~ sort of, ~I suppose, structural flaws that we were observing in the profession.

Charlie: So everything from~ you know, ~the huge dependence on unpaid overtime all the way to~ you know, ~the issues of low fees and~ you know, ~really abysmal quality construction, especially in the UK. And. It all started out very much with this kind of quite tight focus on architecture and the architecture industry and what we found was that sort of, ~you know, ~no matter where we [00:04:00] started any issue that we would look at.

Charlie: We would kind of pull that thread and the thread would always lead back to larger political economic conditions. So, ~you know, ~to give you an example we would critique unpaid overtime practice owners would then tell us that unpaid overtime is because of low fees. We then learned that low fees was because of the loss of fixed fees under Thatcher and then the kind of process of neoliberalism, meaning that there's this sort of.

Charlie: Race to the bottom and who can charge the lowest fee to win work. And then you get back to the wider impacts of neoliberalism, which you can kind of see has created this race to the bottom effect, not just in architecture, but in, ~you know, ~almost all aspects of socially useful production. So we've now got to a point where our sort of critique of architecture isn't really bounded by disciplinary lines, [00:05:00] but architecture is more of a~ you know, ~medium through which you can make kind of larger critiques and organize at larger scale towards more fundamental shifts in the political economy in order to.

Charlie: Prioritize social and ecological need ahead of the needs of, or the interests of capital.

Future Architects Front Approach
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Silvia: I imagine this is where your stubbornness comes in, is that people love saying about architecture, like, this is how it's always been done, or we can't change anything, things like that, where it's very much like, we're not going to do anything about it.

Silvia: We're just going to like, work with what we have and do our best. So, did you approach this, like, and like, I'm actually going to do something about this. I'm going to like, gather data and make my points from this.

Charlie: yEah, I mean, I guess it was. A little bit of some individual factors in the sense that yeah, both pretty and I I suppose learned a lot of these skills during our masters a lot of these like analytical skills.

Charlie: [00:06:00] anD then also we come from fairly similar kind of like working class backgrounds as well. So that. I think also gives us a kind of perspective that typically isn't~ you know, ~put on a pedestal in the world of architecture. And then I think there are also a great deal of kind of environmental factors to almost groups like Future Architects Front and similar kind of grassroots groups that we work with.

Charlie: I think there's a wider sort of~ sort of ~more fundamental economic reality to why these groups have emerged now. And that's not because, ~you know, ~as much as I love, ~you know, sort of ~like millennial there isn't really anything special or unique about us generationally. The only thing that's different about.

Charlie: Are generations is that we are the first ones to begin to experience lower conditions of living than previous generations. And this is reflected in, ~you know, ~housing, availability, housing, affordability salaries, for example in the UK right now part one architectural [00:07:00] assistance are as far as I know, for the first time being paid.

Charlie: Basically the equivalent of minimum wage. So what's happened over the course of that, ~you know, ~time period of neoliberalism that I mentioned is that in order to bring those fees down, costs have been cut in the salary packets of the most junior staff mainly. And we're getting to a point now where you physically cannot cut those part one salaries anymore.

Charlie: Because if you do, then you're paying below minimum wage. So I think the reason why our critique has stuck and why you see more critique like ours now is not because we're the first to do it because in the UK, for example, you can look at like the new architecture movement, which dates back to the seventies and eighties.

Charlie: And they're really saying things that are kind of shockingly similar to what we're saying today. But I think the difference now is that there's a level of kind of you can't quite ignore the problems today in the [00:08:00] way that you could 50 years ago, because people really are ~sort of ~starting to lose every single lifeline that they have.

Charlie: So you have all of the kind of social challenges that I mentioned, and then on top of that. You also have the issues of climate as well, which just go into exacerbating these conditions and exacerbating how this kind of like inequality plays out and impacts people at a global scale. So, yeah, I think we're certainly not the first people to.

Charlie: make these arguments. We're certainly not the first people to make these critiques. I think the reason why they're breaking through a lot more now is because of this condition, this condition that like, we're finally at a point now where any kind of like buffer that people would have to kind of protect themselves from these wider exploitative conditions pretty much gone now.

Charlie: Like you do not have the sort of. Privileged condition the architectural [00:09:00] workers used to enjoy. ~You know, ~decades ago, for example, you don't have the free education. Now you don't have the social housing now. And so without these sort of wider kind of social spending protections that used to be provided by governments and council.

Charlie: More people are ~kind of~ kind of being forced into positions like ours not out of a kind of~ you know, ~purely moral stance against existing practice, but out of, ~you know, ~pure necessity more than anything in many, many cases.

Shift in Architecture Space
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Silvia: Yeah, definitely. So there's really, you can't ignore it anymore. Before people, the argument was that people could say like, this doesn't really affect me.

Silvia: So I don't really need, like, there's no skin in the game for me. But now it's like, there's nothing left. So have you seen a shift in things like as a result of your work or what kind of shifts or things have happened?

Charlie: So I think there are some really kind of clear shifts, which are really easy to point to.

Charlie: So like a couple that I could mention, for example, are like us the Architecture Union [00:10:00] saw alongside groups like the Architects Climate Action Network And groups student members of the Royal Institute of British Architects both current and previous we, in the last couple of years have organized our own kind of internal elections for Reba Royal Institute of British Architects president and Reba council seats ~ and not only did we so~ so we ran those to kind of choose a candidate that was a worker rather than running a practice and someone who was kind of younger and more representative of the membership than the usual kind of 50 plus bald white men who own their own companies who usually get that position.

Charlie: And so we ran our own election process a guy called Moira on that. And then he became the person that we supported to run in the actual reproduction. And as I'm sure many people will know ahead of time he ended up winning that. So through this kind of, like, grassroots organizing process~ you know, ~we've been able to influence arguably one of the, like, major positions of [00:11:00] influence institutional positions within The architectural profession in the UK.

Charlie: anD then the following year, we did the same with the council seats. So we created a kind of like, inter organizational lobbying group called the just transition lobby which was basically a way of building on the success of Moira's election and trying to create it, create a more kind of like broader institutional movement out of it.

Charlie: And then seven people who ran under the Just Transition Lobby banner ended up winning and getting seats in the Reba Council. So that was great as well. So I think there is kind of like tangible wins that we can point to really easily. But. I would say the largest shift maybe is kind of harder to point to or quantify which is, it certainly isn't anything that we can take direct credit for, it's just something that I think we're part of, is this kind of like wider cultural shift in architecture towards addressing things like The labor movement towards addressing~ you know, ~the sort [00:12:00] of contemporary continuing colonial impact of architecture in the built environment, for example, and, ~you know, ~like leaning, really leaning into all these problem spaces rather than trying to kind of gloss over them with a sort of esque finish. And yeah, I think a lot of that is down to those, ~you know, those, those~ more like baseline conditions for people that I mentioned earlier. And one way that you can see that is the fact that ~You know, ~most of these groups, including us have all been started since 2019.

Charlie: So like, the architecture union saw they started in 2019, the architects climate action network. They started in 2019 groups like sound advice. I think they also started in 2019. We started in 2021. So yeah, it's a lot of this, a lot of these like groups who now play really enormous roles in both social.

Charlie: and ecological~ you know, ~justice quite new groups like ACAN is being consulted for~ you know, ~policy decisions by government right now. And they were made in 2019. So I [00:13:00] think, yeah, that larger shift in the kind of, power of grassroots movements to have an influential voice on a lot of these conversations and to like actually change the parameters of the discourse as well.

Charlie: That I think to me is probably the biggest shift that we're seeing right now, but it's kind of hard to like point to specific aspects of it because I still feel like we're very much in it. So it's more of a kind of. Shifting of the Overton window almost for once in a, good way.

Charlie: I

FAF Organization
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Silvia: have a question that might be like a little, I don't know, basic, but like, how large is FAF? Like, I know you and Priti started it, but like, how large is this organization? Because that's part of it, right? That you are representing a large group of people and then now it cannot be ignored.

Charlie: So there's only two of us that are publicly linked to it, Priti And then we have anonymously about, ~you know, ~around eight to ten people~ you know, ~at different times in the year, [00:14:00] depending on availability and interest and things like this who yeah, contribute. And They mainly stay anonymous because they would probably have some job insecurity based on where they work right now, if they were to do this kind of thing out in the open.

Charlie: So that's roughly the kind of shape of the group. And the reason why you'll. Only really see pretty and myself publicly associated with it is because I have my sort of ~civic~ civic square work, which is ~ you know, ~CIC an organization that's incredibly rooted in social and ecological justice and not part of the kind of.

Charlie: architecture profession. So I'm almost a sort of step removed which means none of the kind of like repercussions of any of this critique can really be held over me. And Brittany's doing a PhD right now. So again, we're both like just removed enough to, I suppose, have the privilege to be able to.

Charlie: Do this without it being kind of coming back to bite us, but that's not sadly not the [00:15:00] case for the others who ~kind of~ work with us. So it's a bit of a mix of public private collaboration type set up that we have right now. I can

How to improve Architecture industry without directly critizing who work in the industry?
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Silvia: kind of relate to that that you want to improve the industry, but to do so you have to criticize it.

Silvia: And it's hard to do that with the support of people in the industry without like, are you directly criticizing your former bosses and like, co workers and things like that. And all who people I feel like you have respect and For all of these people, but still want to change the structures that they are part of and the decisions that they did or did not make.

Silvia: So it's a very interesting place to be. And I still don't know exactly where, like how to walk that line all the time.

Charlie: Yeah. And I mean, it also one of the reasons why we don't really. Advocate for~ you know, ~reform, I suppose, because ~you know, ~there's no way of, like, equality, training. You're way out of the exploitative [00:16:00] baseline of the profession because the reason that the profession is exploitative is not out of poor moral judgment.

Charlie: The reason that the profession is exploitative is because that is structurally how you are incentivized to behave. you don't put a low bid in for work because you think that'd be nice. Let's give them a discount. You do it because that's the only way that you're going to be able to win work in competition with others.

Charlie: So all of the issues that we're seeing are not driven by a kind of like bad boss mentality. Like there are plenty of bad bosses out there. Don't get me wrong. But that largely bad due to the political economic conditions that they make decisions according to. So we're not really interested in focusing our attention on a sort of individual, but rather we're more interested in how do you actually try to leverage the sort of like mechanisms of power and the policies that determine what criteria decisions are made according to.

Charlie: [00:17:00] So I think that's one thing that really kind of helps us keep out of maybe like the messiness. I mean, we're definitely not always out of the messiness of it. We're very much in the messiness of it a lot, but a degree of separation from the messiness comes from the fact that we don't really put any of this down to sort of, malice.

Charlie: it's really a very logical outcome of the sort of structures that we live under right now.

How did the Pandemic affect Architecture space?
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Silvia: And then how did the pandemic affect all of this? Because I think all the inequalities were definitely emphasized. And I think, at least for me, like, it made it very clear that the firms, like, ~you know, ~the bottom line is how do we still be, like be profitable during all of this? And that became very clear during the pandemic, like, where their priorities were.

Silvia: So, yeah, how, did that affect

Charlie: everything? Yeah, I think. For us, it was kind of twofold. One was that it. really stripped away a lot of the artifice a lot of practices used to, kind of [00:18:00] hide their decisions behind and hide their rationale. Like ~You know, ~you really start to see how much that, ~you know, ~we're all a family here type sentiment means when there is a situation like this and suddenly you're getting~ you know, ~over redundancies or furlough fraud or using working from home as a way of Shockingly, almost increasing unpaid overtime because now people are technically living at their desks to some extent.

Charlie: So I think it was really good for pulling the wool from people's eyes in terms of. ~You know, ~the actual conditions that we're working under in this profession. And then another thing it did, which I think directly enabled us to do what we did was that it kind of, leveled the playing field in terms of like legitimacy a great deal, because suddenly the space that we were occupying was the same as the space that like.

Charlie: A newspaper or a university was occupying. So the fact that we were [00:19:00] doing events online or the fact that our critique was like shared and communicated online and often through social media that suddenly. Wasn't something that you could just kind of, you know, hand wave away as unimportant because that was where everyone had to be all of a sudden.

Charlie: So that I think was the main impact of the pandemic in terms of the conditions that we emerged within. And I think some of those are fairly lasting. , impact. So I still think that a lot of the work that we do online has still a greater legitimacy now than it would have prior to the pandemic, even though we're, ~you know, ~not really locked down anymore.

Charlie: And that I think it kind of like wider~ sort of ~discovery that I've noticed lots of people making was that it kind of. Yeah. Revealed the falsehood of necessary productivity as well, because suddenly everyone's like, Oh, okay, I am. Working from home. Maybe I am furloughed [00:20:00] and maybe or maybe, ~you know, ~we're doing less work and being less productive and we're, ~you know, ~cutting global carbon emissions enormously because we're traveling and consuming less.

Charlie: But somehow. We're kind of okay. And somehow for a lot of people, actually, their quality of life is improving because now they're able to see their family more or focus on their health more. So I think there was also a little bit of a kind of like light bulb moment for a lot of people where they got a glimpse into.

Charlie: What the world could be like if every single aspect of our economy was not geared towards squeezing as much productivity out of you as physically possible in order to maximize profits. So I think that not just in architecture, but just across the board that was another really ~sort of ~impactful.

Charlie: observation that I know a lot of people made during this time period too. So yeah, it just, it did, it did definitely reset the bounds of a lot of these [00:21:00] discussions both in terms of where the discussions can happen and what they're about. So yeah, I think that there's huge impact from it.

Charlie: And it's, certainly not surprised that That was the context that we emerged out of. I don't think.

Shifts of Architecture from Traditional Architecture VS Modern Social Architecture
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Silvia: Yeah, I think everyone has a very, ~you know, ~personal and vivid memory of how they experienced the pandemic. And I think like, just dealing with the pandemic and also dealing with, like, working on projects and deadlines.

Silvia: I was just like, I do not want to be doing this. It's like, felt like that. We were working harder and more hours, like you said, and then, but for projects that weren't, like, for certain going to happen at, like, if you had a deadline because you needed the drawings and because, ~you know, ~the building was going to be built, it wasn't necessarily going to be built in the middle of a pandemic, so I know what you mean when you say that, like, the rest of our life, ~you know, ~you can think about that, but then I feel like when you're on a project, And that's part of the reason why I left traditional architecture, because I was like, I don't want to always be worrying about my projects [00:22:00] and their deadlines that are sometimes, oftentimes internally set, and then just like stressing myself out at that.

Silvia: And I think maybe that's just like the personality type I had, but I also feel that you're not proposing that people leave the profession either. Like, you want the profession to be improved so people can stay in architecture and the related fields.

Charlie: Yeah. So, I mean, my, overall view, I suppose, is that right now architecture works according to the interest of capital.

Charlie: So, what architects do, what urban development takes place is almost entirely decided according to how can value be extracted from the production and reproduction of the built environment. So, my. Kind of, I suppose, the world that I am trying to work towards through all aspects of my work in different ways is a world where architecture is produced according to social and ecological [00:23:00] necessity, not according to capital.

Charlie: So, it's a kind of hope that includes architecture in the built environment, but isn't necessarily about architecture in the built environment. So it's a fundamental rewiring of the political economy, which has profound consequences for architecture. But like I said, it doesn't start with architecture.

Charlie: And~ You know, ~we have glimpses through history of what is possible when these political economic motives are shifted because they're, you know, in the UK, for example, there was a brief window in the wake of World War Two, where for a short period of time. The income on labor overtook the income on capital, which basically meant that, ~you know, ~throughout most of, ~you know, ~the last 100, 200 years, you make more from having money and getting returns on money than you do in working and selling your labor.

Charlie: So, due to things like [00:24:00] increased welfare spending, council houses the NHS, things like this. There was a window in the UK from about the fifties to the eighties where architecture or not all architecture, but a lot of architecture was guided by social need. And this is where you see the kind of like golden era of modernism, right?

Charlie: And all of these beloved~ sort of, ~housing designs. This is where you get. ~you know, ~you know, architect, architectures time of like manifestos and architecture as being for the people, for the public good, et cetera, et cetera. And while I think we have a tendency to kind of like tell that story through the kind of Western architectural canon lens of like great men coming up with great ideas.

Charlie: I think it's much more. Historically accurate and honest to say that it purely a response to the political economic conditions of how the built environment was produced. And~ you know, ~this was a time [00:25:00] when 50 percent of architects were employed by public bodies. Whereas now, if you. think that was the start of the 70s, about 50 UK were publicly employed, whereas if you fast forward that to today, it's less than 1%. So I think ~sort of ~world of architecture that I'm interested in trying to work towards is one where that outcome of social need and social value is at the forefront of any design or built environment production process alongside design.

Charlie: What we now know much more about in terms of planetary boundaries and ecological limits. So that's guess that's the kind of like point that's the kind of like hopeful future horizon that I hold in my head which is like I said, Not really. About architecture, but has great implications and consequences for how architecture is practiced and for how people's role in the profession will have to change.

Survival of construction supply
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Silvia: I assume, I hope you feel [00:26:00] that, like, we're, that the shifts that you have seen are, like, moving in a direction that will get there. What do you think would be the turning point to? Like, ~you know, ~get over the edge or is it the fact that like when people have no choice but to do something about their situation so that they can survive in it?

Silvia: Is that the turning point?

Charlie: Yeah, so there's definitely a point. In the not too distant future where there will be a sort of macro system level change one way or another that as an outcome is materially inevitable because so many aspects of the way that we practice architecture today are untenable based on what we know about planetary boundaries and ecological limits.

Charlie: And to give you just one example of that um, The construction grade sand that we use in concrete is the second most mined second most extracted natural material on earth after water that is predicted to run out [00:27:00] by about 2050. So we are kind of staring down the barrel of one of our main materials that we use to produce easily a sort of majority of urban development work worldwide being unavailable in the not too distant future.

Charlie: So we are a position in terms of like, ~sort of ~planetary consumption of materials. And the way that the economy works in terms of material extraction. that it simply just cannot continue. Like physically, scientifically, it cannot continue. And so we will inevitably come to a point where we have to make a decision to do something.

Charlie: And the decision as I see it is whether to. work towards a just transition or whether to lean more into inequity and sort of colonial extraction, but doing it under the umbrella of like green colonialism.

How can everyone get involved in doing the transition to "Green Colonialism"
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Silvia: how can people join your efforts or get involved in their own organizations [00:28:00] to do something about this?

Charlie: So, I think the greatest democratic tool that we have at our disposal right now Generally speaking, is the ability to withdraw labor. So if you look at any of the~ you know, ~really massive, if you look at like so many of the really massive societal shifts and wins in the last a hundred years, 200 years, so many of them came from.

Charlie: Unions and from labor organizing. So the fact that we have a weekend, the fact that we have a 40 hour workweek, that came from unions organizing to demand a weekend, to demand a limit to the hours worked in a week. And so often when we hear about these kind of like big societal shifts, we hear about them.

Charlie: Spoken through the lens of like, pioneering politicians who voted through these policies and so often these things are only voted through because they are given no option, but to vote them through so centralized [00:29:00] politics more often than not catches up to grassroots organizing rather than the other way around, even right now in the context that we're in Today, if we look at, ~you know, ~the genocide in Gaza, right?

Charlie: The only reason that the UK has now called for a ceasefire is because of striking and because of grassroots organizing, which has disrupted trade through the Suez Canal. It's disrupted the operations of groups like BP. So A lot of these big, momentous turning points, they simply don't come from just turning up to vote alone.

Charlie: They come from organizing beyond the bounds of putting a ballot in a box. And I think for most people, the easiest way to exercise that right and easiest way to wield that power is through a union because that's the only way that you can actually Show up to bargain with your full force because as disparate entities, we don't hold a lot of power.[00:30:00]

Charlie: But if you collectivize labor, then suddenly you have a literal society shifting amount of power, which we can observe repeatedly throughout history. If we. Just take a look. So that I think is generally my advice to people. But at the same time, don't feel limited to unions because there are so many really incredible.

Charlie: Grassroots organizations that are emerging right now. Like I've mentioned some in the UK, but for example I know in the US you have like the architecture lobby. You have, the sort of newly formed architectural workers, United Union in the U. S. in Canada, there's architects against housing alienation.

Charlie: I think they're called and there's a newly incorporated union in Portugal. So it really is a kind of time where this. Grassroots way of organizing is just kind of getting so like rich and kind of really, really [00:31:00] thriving across so many different parts of the world right now that there's never been a better time to either find a union, find an organization and join one.

Charlie: Or, if you want, do what we did and just start something with nothing but a Instagram page. But, I think just kind of taking that step to go beyond thinking of yourself as solely a designer or solely someone who engages politically through voting alone and saying, okay, how can I actually go beyond that?

Charlie: How can I actually do a little bit more? That, I think, is the first step to kind of finding. The space where you can be most effective and most impactful

Marker
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Silvia: and you share some of those first steps or like, actually, not even the steps, but the ideas that you felt that, like, we need to do something. Okay. Like, what can we do? And also maybe in addition to that, some of the. Skills and talents that people can utilize, ~you know, ~that at all levels of exposure, ~you know, ~like, maybe they're really good at one thing.

Silvia: And that's really helpful in this way. Like, examples you've seen.

Charlie: Yeah, so, guess, in terms of, like, equipping yourself [00:32:00] intellectually, there are two articles that I always recommend to students when I do lectures which are really good, kind of like first steps into these ways of thinking.

Charlie: One is called death to the calling which is on the failed architecture website by Marissa Portwright. And in that article Marissa basically unpacks how a lot of students and a lot of professionals conditioned to see architecture not as a job, not as labor, but as a kind of like higher calling, something that's almost like spiritual and the profession kind of uses that almost like gaslighting, basically it uses it as a way of~ you know, ~alienating workers.

Charlie: From their actual condition of workers. And, ~you know, ~almost trying to convince them that, ~you know, ~really, there's something else. There's something different. They're a different group with different interests. And one example that she gives in the article that I really love is architects even name what it is that they do.

Charlie: Because you never hear about an architecture company or an architecture business. It's always a practice or a [00:33:00] atelier or a studio, right? So even at that very, very baseline level, we're obscuring the actual sort of economic reality of what it is that we're doing. So I think that's really great, a kind of unpacking and, ~you know, ~really kind of tearing to shreds a lot of these myths that are peddled in university and in practice.

Charlie: And then a second one and I do suggest reading them in this order is an article by late lay your hand ran again in failed architecture, which is called all designers political, but not all politics is design. And the really great thing about this piece from my point of view is that a lot of architects when they kind of get that architecture is political and when they want to affect change a lot of them, default to this position that the best thing I can do is change things through design, like as a design practitioner.

Charlie: And the sad truth of that is that there's a very low ceiling to what you can do through design practice under existing political economic conditions. [00:34:00] So if you're a designer who wants to build social housing, you can't design your way to social housing. Like you can design as much as you want, but you're still not going to get The public funding to do it.

Charlie: So the only way that you get to public housing or social housing is through operating in a political capacity to secure policy shifts to make that feasible as an outcome. And it's not to say that design. Is useless because to~ sort of ~answer the second part of your question, I think a lot of the skills that were taught in architecture school are very, very useful for doing this kind of political organizing and campaigning.

Charlie: Like I think we probably wouldn't have been nearly as successful if, ~you know, ~we weren't all proficient in almost every different kind of software and way of visualizing and communicating ideas under the sun. So there's plenty and plenty of ways that you can use these skills and you can use these.

Charlie: Tools to political effect, but that's very different from thinking that you can do [00:35:00] it through your existing design practice, specifically your design practice as it exists in the existing capitalist context. So, I think. Understanding that distinction of all design being political, but not all politics being design is for a lot of people, the kind of last hurdle that they face in becoming really effective organizers and really effective In this more kind of like political capacity, and I think that's then the space where looking at the skills you've learned looking at your ability to visualize or write or draw that's when that those skills can really find their most effective home.

Charlie: And you know, as well as the group that I've already mentioned, I think like, if you look at like the Funambulist magazine, for example, like what a great example of how you can take architectural skills and make those politically powerful. Like if you look at some of the maps that are drawn in the Funambulist magazine, they are incredibly, incredibly powerful politically.

Charlie: And [00:36:00] they come from An architect's tool set and training. But they aren't things that are profitable within existing design practice, right? So you have to find alternative spaces or alternative ways of funding beyond design practice to make that something that can do what you want it to do.

Charlie: So. I think that's what I would probably point people to in terms of like ways to try and get into the right sort of headspace and then ways to think about your own training and your own skills and how those might align with some of these like larger system shift types of goals.

Architecture Career
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Silvia: That was such a great answer to the question.

Silvia: I don't even think I asked it the way you answered it, but that's like a lovely answer. Because as I'm listening to you describe that, I'm thinking back on my own experiences. Like, what if I thought about my first job in an architecture office, not like This pay is so bad. The environment's not that great, but it's like, Oh, but I need this experience.

Silvia: ~Well, ~it's also just a job. If I look at it as a job, it's not a very good [00:37:00] job. Right? So I should find a better job. And I think that took me. It took me like 5 years to realize. And then when you're talking about how we have all these skills, like, we can take an idea and communicate it and create it from nothing.

Silvia: Like, that's literally what we do as architects. So now these ideas are just not designs for buildings or like projects or events. Like, they align to a bigger cause and purpose.

Charlie: Yeah, and I think another thing maybe that's worth thinking about specifically from the point of view like if someone is listening and they've since left architecture and it may be thinking that this doesn't pertain to them so much.

Charlie: This absolutely pertains to anyone working in any kind of private company right now, because none of these issues are exclusive to architecture. And the exploitation. Which your work is built upon is not necessarily always your own exploitation. So you might have improved personal [00:38:00] conditions, for example, let's say you moved from~ you know, ~poorly paid, unpaid overtime part one, two, some kind of designer like Apple, for example, your personal conditions may have improved, but you also then have to think about what are the social and ecological outcomes of the work that I'm doing now.

Charlie: Because. Within a capitalist context, the exploitation never goes away. All it does is it shifts up or down the supply chain. So if we continue with the example of Apple, what are the conditions of the factory workers assembling these products? What are the conditions of, ~you know, ~the children in the Congo being forced to mine the cobalt for these kinds of electronics.

Charlie: And this is where. I think our way of framing conditions, working conditions needs to move to like beyond a kind of like traditional union fixation of labor conditions in the global north and [00:39:00] towards a more sort of like internationalist labor solidarity view, which takes into account. the working conditions of, workers and of people around the world.

Charlie: Because otherwise, I think we risk setting ourselves up for failure where the second our own labor conditions are improved, we kind of like put everything down and we say, well,~ well,~ job done, no problem there, but really all we've done is we've just shifted that exploitation somewhere else in the world.

Charlie: And that's how we're getting a larger share of the kind of capital pie. So that for me is one of the really big reasons why it's important to try and like. hold a lot of this organizing beyond traditional boundaries of like the union or the climate organizer or the like feminist group, et cetera, et cetera.

Charlie: Like really all of these things need to be seen as like, Struggles in solidarity, which are working towards a kind of intersectional aim, which is the abolition of capital is the [00:40:00] driving force behind society. And then only when you see things in that way, can you kind of avoid the trap of like, you know, I've got a raise and I'm able to now pay my bills and that's fine.

Charlie: We'll call it a day which is certainly something that I think. labor movements in the past have kind of fallen into. So I think that like extra layer, that intersectionality for me is really important as well.

Silvia: I can't even imagine what that world would look like, to not be run by capitalism.

Charlie: Yeah, I mean, there are kind of glimpses that you can look at. Like, I think if you look at the UK and the NHS, for example, that's an example of what healthcare looks like, not under capitalism, like, not so much today because it's been defunded by austerity so much, but ~ you know, ~in its kind of original form as a well funded healthcare service, which is accessible and free at the point of use for all people.

Charlie: That's an example of what happens when you [00:41:00] prioritize social need as opposed to prioritizing capital. So we have all of these, like, demonstrations all over the place that we can look to and it's really more about Working towards~ sort of ~holistic system where these are no longer exceptions to the rule that are continually being battered for being exceptions.

Charlie: If we look again to the case of the NHS or if we look again to cases of like social housing and, almost any part of the world and bring those to the kind of being the norm. And~ you know, ~it's certainly not a kind of easy goal to set yourself. And it's certainly not what anyone would call a kind of like, practical in the sense of like something being easily achievable goal, but it is truly the only material outcome that does not end in major societal self termination for humanity.

Charlie: So it's one of those things where however much we think it might be possible or however hard [00:42:00] we find it to imagine, we better. Get practicing and get imagining and get working towards it. Or learn to accept the alternative, which is cascading crisis at So ~you know, ~it's a bit of a weird place to get to where I think on the surface, it sounds quite debilitating and it sounds quite demotivating.

Charlie: But for me, the fact that there is this kind of like scientific material. Inevitability to the end of this system due to climate and material reasons that there is some comfort to be found in that because, it does mean that we probably have the best opportunity that has ever presented itself for a just transition that we're talking about now.

Charlie: So, bizarrely for me, at least there is a strange kind of comfort to find in the instability. But, that might just be my stubbornness talking again.

Decide before Crisis happens
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Silvia: ~Well, ~ Well, I'm glad you have it though, because someone needs to do something about it. And you are right that like, we will be forced to make a change or make these [00:43:00] decisions at some point down the line.

Silvia: So it's better to do it before like tragedy happens, like in the case of like, building standards or like, or, ~you know, ~we lose all of our workforce because no one can afford to be paid so little anymore for these hours. So. It is better to do something about it. before the crisis happens.

Charlie: Yeah, totally.

Charlie: And ~you know, ~I think we are kind of seeing the consequences of not doing something about it already. Like if you think about the wildfires in Australia, if you think about half of Bangladesh being literally off being underwater very, very recently, we, even according to the productive kind of capitalist framing, we are.

Charlie: Facing things that completely go against the purported values of the existing system and the existing system cannot stay as it is whilst surviving these impacts. So it is a moment of inexorable transition, and the decision that we get to make as [00:44:00] a sort of society at this period of transition is Whether it's a just transition or an unjust transition that really is the choice.

Charlie: And so, yeah, that's, that's kind of where I at least position myself in terms of like, wider political economic context at this point in history.

Closing
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Silvia: So to close up we usually ask some questions like, what do you think of architecture or like, or how would you describe architecture in your own words?

Silvia: And I think you've actually spoke about that as ~you know, ~you know, when you were comparing it with politics, it's like, and how are they related? But I'm actually curious to hear, like, you mentioned that you're stubborn and hopeful and also stubborn. So, like, are there any, Like words of that you come back to that kind of like keep you going either with the stubbornness or the hopefulness to like just keep going through the times when it's like a little rougher.

Charlie: I mean, I think the main one, like, if we're thinking like, I suppose, [00:45:00] words to hold a lot of like personal gravity Biggest one for me would probably be solidarity, because that's the thing that almost in any situation of any level of complexity or urgency or like magnitude, whatever that is, that I suppose is the thing that would describe as my almost main driver in how I try to show up in places and make decisions and I think what I really like about That is that it kind of expresses~ sort of ~a sentiment of like the possibility of like a shared prosperity or like a shared thriving between any people all people. but it's not. a kind of like, it's not like a camaraderie that's rooted in, like, comfort or complacency, like, solidarity is about collectively trying to move towards something and to move towards something that is just so that for me is I guess a very Personally valuable like [00:46:00] bird and is something that kind circles around my brain a lot.

Charlie: And I think something else I like about it as well is that it doesn't limit itself to sort of like~ sort of ~certain acts or outcomes like we can have a kind of like momentous. shift in union organizing, for example, that changes policy in the entire country. And that is an act of solidarity. But at the same time, if you know that someone you're working with or someone you're organizing with is struggling under the sort of inhumane conditions that we often are all forced to live through just being there to Bring them food or a hot drink or just have a conversation that too is solidarity.

Charlie: And so it's something that can really like, I said, just kind of permeate all contexts, all scales all aspects of life. And that I suppose to me is The, guess, kind of like compass that I try to use day to day.

Silvia: Yeah, that's a great one. And I love how you mentioned that it [00:47:00] transcends scales and like how you act on that.

Silvia: And Thank you for all of your thoughtful answers, actually. Like it was a really nice conversation.

Charlie: Yeah, no, thanks for, thanks for having me. It's been something I've been looking forward to for a while. So yeah, I'm glad, great on your guys side as well.

Silvia: Yes, it was. And I'm excited to share it with our listeners and I will include those resources that you mentioned in our show notes so they can access them.

Silvia: Yeah,

Charlie: yeah. Thanks so much for that.

Silvia: Thank you so much. Amazing.

Charlie: See you later.

Outro
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Erin: Hey everyone. It's Erin from out of Architecture. If you find these stories inspiring and are looking for guidance, clarity, or just need someone to talk to about where you are in your career, please know that we offer 30 minute consultations to talk about what may be next for you. If you're interested, head to out of architecture.com/scheduling to book some time with us.

Jake: Hey everyone. It's Jake from Out of Architecture. We love hearing your stories, but we know there's more out there that we've still yet to experience. If you or someone you know would be a good fit for the podcast and has a story about taking their architecture skills beyond the [00:48:00] bounds of traditional practice, we'd love to hear it.

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