From the Ground Up: Building Solidarity in Somerville through Aspirational Design

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From the Ground Up: Building Solidarity in Somerville through Aspirational Design

ALL ARCHITECTURE IS POLITICAL.

ALL POLITICS ARE LOCAL.

COMMUNITY POWER IS BUILT, NOT GIVEN.

What does it mean to build community in a broken world? As architects working in the public sphere, we are cast into a predatory system that divides people. Networks of capital, privatization, inequity, gentrification, and displacement all convene to fracture human connection.

How do communities resist?

This session will be a presentation and discussion about anti-capitalist architecture studios run at the Rhode Island School of Design for the past two years in the spring semesters. It will outlinine the pedagogy and associated issues of public engagement, protecting student labor, and creating a collaborative student-driven classroom environment.

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ABOUT THE EVENT ORGANIZER

W Gavin Robb

W Gavin Robb is an architectural designer, theorist, educator and the founding principal of Kin Design Studio. His work explores civic infrastructure, advanced digital fabrication and constructing the imagination. He received a MArch with Distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2014. While at the GSD he co-founded an advanced research lab focused on complex geometry and fabrication.

Robb founded Kin Design Studio in 2017, where he is the studio lead. The studio uses advanced digital fabrication, community engagement and a deep knowledge of how cities work to create inspiring places for people. Among other projects, he is currently designing a 250+ student school in Kampala, Uganda.

Before founding Kin Design Studio, he worked at Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects in Atlanta, GA, where he completed several high-profile projects. His work has been exhibited at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

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Who owns social housing?

Often, we think of mass social housing as something needing large entities—government agencies, philanthropies, or unions—to take on the profit-driven real estate sector. The history of New York City’s housing activism suggests otherwise, that tenants themselves are capable of leading the struggle for affordable and livable cities.

Our Manifesto

Build worker power and collective agency through unions and cooperatives.
A living wage, benefits, job security, and wage transparency across the discipline.
No more free labor; no unpaid internships, unpaid overtime, or unpaid competitions.
Center the importance of labor in our understanding of architecture. Architecture is work!
Stop peddling buildings as products. Demand compensation based on the value and impact our work creates.
End oppression based on gender within and enabled by the discipline.
Confront the complicity of architecture in racism. Confront racism in our workplaces.
Design for the full spectrum of human life. Universal design is not an afterthought.
Challenge the concept of licensure. Expand the right to practice.
Celebrate the collective process of producing architecture. Demystify architecture as the work of a solo creative genius.
Climate justice as the basis of all architectural work. There can be no sustainable future without sustainable labor practices.
Fight for democratic alternatives to the capitalist system of development.

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info@architecture-lobby.org

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New Haven, CT 06512