Failed Architecture

In the seventh Breezeblock episode, FA editor Charlie Clemoes speaks to Pune-based architect, journalist and researcher Shruti Hussain about the current situation for migrant workers in India amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Breezeblock #6, FA’s founding editor Michiel van Iersel and architect Anne Dessing discuss the Swedish city of Kiruna with Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, curator of the exhibition Kiruna Forever at ArkDes Sweden’s National Centre for Architecture and Design.

Kiruna is experiencing one of the biggest urban transformation projects in recent history. The city is being relocated by three kilometres due to the expansion of a mine, around which Kiruna was built. A third of the population must relocate, housing blocks and landmark buildings are being demolished or moved, and a new city is taking shape.

For Breezeblock #5, FA editors Juana Salcedo and María Mazzanti discuss the situation in Bogotá since the COVID-19 lockdown, especially as it affects the large informal sector of the Colombian economy.

In Breezeblock #4, FA editor Charlie Clemoes talks to Los Angeles Tenants’ Union (LATU) organiser Sasha Plotnikova about the situation for tenants in LA amid the current Covid-19 pandemic crisis, as well as discussing the organising efforts of LATU in recent years, the prospects for a permanent rent strike, and how to get involved in tenant organising.

In Breezeblock #4, FA editor Charlie Clemoes talks to Los Angeles Tenants’ Union (LATU) organiser Sasha Plotnikova about the situation for tenants in LA amid the current Covid-19 pandemic crisis, as well as discussing the organising efforts of LATU in recent years, the prospects for a permanent rent strike, and how to get involved in tenant organising.

In the third Breezeblock episode, FA editor Christin Hu talks to Leijia Hanrahan about sirens, their role in enforcing control and their heightened presence in the New York City soundscape since it became a coronavirus hotspot.

Paris’ famous Louvre Museum was forever transformed in Summer 2018 when it was spectacularly appropriated by megastar power couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z, by way of a music video for their single “Apeshit”. Timed to coincide with Everything is Love, their surprise joint album as The Carters, the video saw the couple, and Beyoncé in particular, performing in front of several significant paintings and sculptures in the museum’s vast collection. Needless to say, two of the world’s most visible and successful black cultural figures seizing control of a space so synonymous with Western imperialism led to a lively debate in the days and weeks that followed.

This episode reflects on that debate, in order to explore the wider relationship between buildings and power, questioning how a building like the Louvre comes to be invested with power, but also, how its seemingly immutable marriage of social and architectural order can be challenged by the sheer defiant presence of the historically excluded, doing something new in that space. With some time passed since the video’s release, we’ll be reflecting on its impact on the Louvre, what it expresses about the museum’s position in contemporary society and what it portends for the future of museum spaces in general.

– Sarah Huny Young is a creative director, artist/photographer, and New Yorker based in Pittsburgh, PA

This episode was directed by Charlie Clemoes/the Failed Architecture team.

In the second Breeblock episode, FA editors Kevin Rogan and Charlie Clemoes talk about Kevin’s recent article for Failed Architecture The City and the City and Coronavirus.

In the first Breezeblock episode, FA editors Eda Hisarlıoğlu and Charlie Clemoes talk about the spatial effects of both Covid-19 and ongoing construction in Istanbul.

We tend to think of architects as professionals rather than workers. Architects design, create, delegate, follow a special calling, but they’re not often seen as “working for a living”, and they’re certainly not much like the workers who actually construct or extract the resources for the buildings they design. And yet, architectural work in the twenty first century has become ever more precarious. As with other white collar workers, architects are becoming increasingly accustomed to short-term contracts, overtime without pay and other traditional hallmarks of exploited labour. 

In light of this new reality, for this episode we’ll be talking to architectural workers from the UK, the USA, and Brazil, about the role a labour union could play in the contemporary architectural profession. We’ll discuss the difficulties, limits and challenges of organizing architectural workers and speculate as to why architects have, until recently, been relatively absent from the history of the labour movement. We’ll also consider how unionisation could give ordinary architectural workers greater control over the buildings and spaces they design as well as over the wider spatial production sector.

– Keefer Dunn is an architect based in Chicago and a national organiser for the Architecture Lobby

This episode was directed by Charlie Clemoes/Jake Soule/the Failed Architecture team.