El arquitecto como trabajador - Francisco González de Canales

Much has been debated in the last half century about the work of the architect —profession or trade, creation or collaboration, autonomous discipline or cog in a socio-political system... — but almost nothing has been written about the architect himself as a worker. One of the initial problems is that the architect has always had trouble recognising himself as a worker. Architects have preferred to see architecture as a vocation, something that is done with pleasure, as a hobby or a passion, and have surrounded this attitude with various mythologies. In recent attempts to describe the state of the profession, the word crisis seems to fill everything and is rarely accompanied by broader reflections. 

This essay addresses issues that appear today in the debate on contemporary architecture and analyses them from a purely occupational perspective. To raise here the figure of the architect as a worker means revising his or her labour status within the contemporary economy, a status shared with other creative workers. It also means starting a critical task with regard to recurrent myths and conditions assumed as unquestionable, with the aim of opening the way to collective alternatives that will make it possible for the architect's work to be a dignified exercise in the near future. 

Francisco González de Canales

Professor of Architectural History, Theory and Composition at the University of Seville. He studied architecture at ETSA Seville, ETSA Barcelona and Harvard GSD, where he was awarded the Dimitris Pikionis prize. In 2004 he founded Canales Lombardero operating between London and Seville. He has lectured at several universities abroad, and since 2008 he has been linked to the Architectural Association in London, where he has been a lecturer in history and theory, unit master and cultural coordinator between 2008 and 2012. He has published over 30 articles in specialist journals and his latest books include First Work: Emerging Architectural Experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s (with B. Steele, 2009), Experimentos con la vida misma (2013), Rafael Moneo: Una Reflexión teórica desde la profesión (2013), Rafael Moneo. Building, Teaching, Writing (2015, with N. Ray) and Política y Fabricación digital - una discusión en curso (2016, with N. A. Lombardero).