Tools: Building Labor History into American Architecture

Architectural practice has become an increasingly relevant topic in the history of architecture. This unfolding field has most notably evolved through studies of architects’ tools and graphic representations, through the changing curricula of architectural schools, to the demographic constitution of the profession, and to the personal training of specific designers. Yet, this collective line of inquiry provides insight well beyond how training and professional procedures shape form. The study of practice also traces how the social conceptions and biases held by design practitioners inform their dealings with other professional groups and, ultimately, how these working relationships constitute the production process in building.The stories of other professional groups in building—let alone the history of their relationship with architects—have received scant attention from historians or architectural scholars. One such group poses potentially constructive directions: building trade labor. Anecdotal sources suggest a conflicted understanding in the history of architects’ labor relations: the romanticizing of craft skill, protesting of labor organizing, and disregarding labor’s influence on built form all mark the historical record. This paper looks at the first organized steelworkers’ shaping of building practices in the US in the first third of the last century, and building designers’ response to this control. As such, it serves as a preliminary hearing of previously silent voices in architectural history.

Volume Editors
Marilys R. Nepomechie & Robert Gonzalez

ISBN
0-935502-54-8