12+ h. a day, 6/7 days a week

- edit on 21.03.2015 -

we have been asked to remove the screen­shot of the out­ra­geous email sent by a promi­nent Japan­ese firm because it “pun­ishes the mes­sen­ger rather than the office who made these rules.”

Although we don’t agree, we com­plied with the request.

Our atten­tion is not on the project archi­tect who sent the email, he prob­a­bly used a tem­plate and had to apply rules decided by the office man­age­ment. Our goal, instead, is to trig­ger a crit­i­cal debate and raise aware­ness on the work dynam­ics of the cre­ative indus­try. Famous archi­tects can be con­sid­ered pub­lic fig­ures, and more so if they have been awarded the pres­ti­gious Pritzker Price. Some even act as trans­ver­sal intel­lec­tu­als and cover insti­tu­tional posi­tions; Because of their pub­lic pro­file, they have great respon­si­bil­ity for what they do — both within and out­side the office walls.

We won­der how could any­body per­form a cre­ative work under con­stant phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure? How can we design for the peo­ple, if we never meet any? By instill­ing the idea that work in Archi­tec­ture should be a 24/7 affair, the very source of the pro­fes­sion is under­mined. Adopt­ing this come-work-for-free pol­icy, offices not only abuse the basic civil rights of stu­dents and young grad­u­ates, but they also take an unfair advan­tage over their com­peti­tors. They influ­ence the mar­ket and raise gen­er­a­tions of frus­trated practitioners.

And this is exactly why the email caused so much emo­tion. We jump off our socks when read­ing it, but we also accept that Archi­tec­ture should be made with uncon­di­tional sac­ri­fice. It is time to debate the rules of this mar­ket, the ethics and goals of our profession.

It is also impor­tant to men­tion that we, the young, ambi­tious and under­paid, should be the first to real­ize the value of our work and the value of our time. The pyra­mi­dal struc­ture of the archi­tec­ture office is out­dated, you don’t learn from this mas­ters more than you can learn from your network.

Here you can find the com­plete On Work