TAL August ‘26 Newsletter

Dear architectural workers,

This month, we welcome a new slate of Lobby members on our organizing committee, serving one-year terms on either the administrative committee or the strategy committee. Over the last few weeks, we have been hashing out our organizational priorities and hopes for the upcoming 2026-2027 year.

It’s been 10 years since our organization swelled in membership and energy, boosted—like many activist orgs—by the ascendance of the insane clown president. Perhaps we can allow ourselves some optimism now, seeing the recent electoral victories of Democratic Socialists in New York City and around the country, and thinking to a future in which our organization actually politically aligns with those in governmental power. The discourse on labor within architecture has become more mainstream, too, with a partner at the famously abusive OMA waxing poetic on changing labor conditions in architecture, and a growing Architectural Workers United, an organization that is proving to be able to channel worker unrest within bigger architecture firms toward collective bargaining action and unionization. Note that this week, AWI, a global labor coalition that includes both TAL and AWU, wrote a direct response in The Architect’s Newspaper to that disorganized argument from upper management, calling out a false moral dichotomy—cynicism or resignation—and offering a pithy vision for a labor-centered path toward reform.

There’s no shortage on the side of pessimism, of course: the eternal race to the bottom line continues with cheapened, “enshittified” construction materials and methods—we face a reality where the developer scion of a national McMansion construction company and Trump mini-me has been appointed as the director of federal housing and acting director of national intelligence. (For all those scared of an Artificial Intelligence takeover, his company eliminated the need for architects as of the early 2010s with their online interactive floor plan tool, complete with automated design customization and specification utilities.) Side by side with that, in the great land of the barndominium, the logical fascist optimization has emerged for ICE warehouse-to-detention camp conversions, halfway between Archizoom and Buchenwald, that manage to violate the most basic health code and life safety requirements, not to mention the terror, violence, and cruelty. Architects respond in protest: “NO. STAMPS. FOR. CAMPS.”

Amidst this, what’s going on for an average architectural worker? What’s the point of unionization or decarbonization in the face of this impossible reality? In the forthcoming documentary Architecture Workers: Organizing For Change, many longstanding members and allies of The Architecture Lobby make the case for the transformative power of organizing in schools, workplaces, alternative practices, indigenous lands, housing authorities, radical pedagogical spaces, construction trades, and everywhere else. In 2026 and 2027, you can expect to be able to see the finished film, 5 years in the making. And you can help us roll it out!

Do you teach or study at an architecture school? Help get a screening on the calendar of your lecture or brown bag series! Do you have access to an audience, an auditorium, a group or chapter meeting, or a classroom? Are you plugged in to a local architecture institution, gallery, or cultural space? Make a connection! Reach us at strategy@architecture-lobby.org.

Looking ahead, in 2027, we plan on hosting a national Members Congress! These periodic Lobby events are amazing opportunities to connect with other architectural workers and friends for workshops, meetings, presentations, and social time. TAL believes in the value of in-person gathering and solidarity building, and supports attendees with transportation subsidies and help with lodging. Be on the lookout for more information toward the end of the year! If you haven’t yet become an official member of The Architecture Lobby, now is a great time to join and plug in! Our discord server is an active place for organizing and discussion—there’s been recent talk of a new zine series and an alternative practice resource-sharing hub. Our reading groups have been particularly active this summer, as well as a workers’ circle focusing on rank-and-file workplace issues.

And finally, this year, the new admin and strategy committees will also host bi-monthly public knowledge-sharing forums, each focusing on a particular topic on the theme of Alternative Practice. The Lobby consists of architectural workers, just like you, who are also trying to make sense of their own roles in the world outside of our participation in The Architecture Lobby. These sessions will show some ways that we can redefine practice on the personal, professional, and political levels. In the pre-pandemic early days of The Architecture Lobby, we would have monthly “membership meetings” via conference call, with all Lobby members encouraged to show up. Many a curious new member would use these opportunities to learn about Lobby initiatives and ideas, and some of our most active working groups spun out of connections and digressions in those meetings. It is in this spirit that we present this new bi-monthly series, inviting all to think together on alternatives in practice to complicity with the capitalist class.

ADMIN COMMITTEE SLATE

Joshua Barnett

Evan Hall

Daham Marapane

Darion Washington

STRATEGY COMMITTEE SLATE

Gabriel Cira

Valérie Lechêne

Rand Lemley

Devon Miller

Cath Wang

Xinyi Xie

Mika Yamaguchi

FINANCE COORDINATOR

Blake Fisher

BOARD OF DIRECTORS SLATE

Aaron Cayer

Andrew Daley

Andrea Dietz

Keefer Dunn

Palmyra Geraki

James Graham

A.L. Hu

Diana Martinez

Juliana Maxim

Dan Roche

Violette de la Selle

Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió

Organize with Other TAL Worker-Members:

Join the Discord server to connect and coordinate with other nation-wide architectural workers: Discord Sign-Up Here and reach out to info@architecture-lobby.org with any questions.

Organizing Committee (OC) meeting - August, 13th @ 9:00pm EST.

Join event via Discord Here

All are welcome.

TAL Green New Deal (GND) Working Group - Every Monday 7:00pm EST

Architectural Workers organizing for a Just Transition in the Building Sector.

Beyond TAL

EWOC Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing - Sign Up

A great place to kick-start the skillsets that are critical to agitating for a union in your workplace.

Direct Action & Mutual Aid:

Donate to anti-carceral de-arrest fund: Mid-West Immigration Bond Fund

Add Jobsite anti-ICE Worker Protections to Your Drawings and Specs: Resources from Arch League of NYC

What Are We Reading

Assembling the Architect by George Barnett Johnston

Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences by Anton Jäger