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.
T-H-E—–A-R-C-H-I-T-E-C-T-U-R-E—–L-O-B-B-Y
JustDesign
More
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.