The JustDesign campaign in late 2018 originally sought to give certification to architecture offices that have exemplary labor practice. It was intended to let would-be employees know how offices treated their workers, not just what designs the office produced. Surveys with six criteria for good labor practices were sent out to employees, and from there, recommended firm owners were interviewed as a follow up. Because not enough exemplary firms materialized, certification was no longer logical and the firms that did make it were written up as case studies, published on our website and in Archinect. In 2020, TAL sought a grant from the Graham Foundation for a relaunch of JustDesign (JustDesign2). It was awarded a grant in December 2020. Various factors led to the demise of that second effort — potential lawsuit from Just, another nonprofit insisting on a name change; the original grant applicants leaving the Lobby — and a request was made to change the goal of the grant to support broader worker issues, to which the Graham Foundation agreed in September 2021. In consultation with the TAL Organizing Committee and TAL membership at large, that broadening distilled into What’s your story? in May 2022.
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Architecture Workers Are Building Power on the Job
Eloise Sherrid Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee July 21, 2025 Excerpt: “I think the exhibit really got people thinking. It was one of maybe two or three genuinely political projects in this entire massive exhibition, and it was the only one that talked about labor. The other ones about politics were about housing. Also, we managed […]
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The Architecture Lobby presents oral history of labor organizing at the 2025 Venice Biennale
Josh Niland Archinect May 8, 2025 Excerpt: “The Architecture Lobby is part of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale with the installation Organizing in the Lobby, which documents their mission as an advocacy group within its place among a worldwide network of new labor activist groups representing the architecture and design industries. The list of collaborators it features includes Architectural […]
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Arsenalegeddon
CCCP ’26 E-flux May 2025 Excerpt: “Yet, there are some moments of fruitful relation. Deep into the exhibition, squeezed against the amphitheater of Speaker’s Corner (by Christopher Hawthorne, Johnston Marklee, Florencia Rodriguez), Organizing in the Lobby (by The Architecture Lobby) highlights our time’s labor crises through video interviews with architecture activist groups, contributing a frame of reference for the […]