Missing in Architecture (MiA), meanwhile, is using industry-focused lectures, workshops and symposiums to question the ‘established traditions’ of practice from its base at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow.
Xcessive Aesthetics
‘The old model of rich bosses employing armies of low-paid junior staff is collapsing around us,’ insists Alberte Lauridsen, a member of Edit Collective. ‘The real question is not if collectives are a viable way of practising architecture, but when they’ll be the only viable way of practising architecture left.’
From its growing arsenal of weapons for change, feminist-led design collective Edit has already produced Gross Domestic Product, a fictional prototype for domestic labour exhibited at the Oslo Architecture Triennale; graphics-led publication A Woman of Colour Enters the Workplace; and a 2021 Barbican exhibition, How We Live Now.
DA, Edit, and Deaf Architecture Front (DAF), all formed since 2018, aim to hold the architecture and design industry accountable for specific problems in the sector (racial, gender and ability bias, respectively) using tactics ranging from how-to guides to events, exhibitions and installations.
Members of the collectives operate alongside their jobs and other commitments. Funding is the biggest challenge. As Edit Collective’s Marianna Janowicz points out, the industry is in a ‘precarious’ state, forcing community groups to ‘compete for sparse resources’. The survival of collectives, advises School SOS co-founder Kishan San, therefore depends on ‘building a durable financial and operational foundation’ – a major challenge when there is ‘no existing framework to follow’.
Each collective is unique, sitting in hard-to-define and self-created spaces, some looking inward at the profession with very targeted aims, others more public and tackling wider social remits.
The AJ will be posting interviews with each of the collectives in a series of articles over the coming week.