I grew up in London as an immigrant child. As I often tell welcome friends who have seen London for the first time in recent years, the city was a very different place twenty years ago. Racism on the playground was very common, and as a little asian boy with busy working parents it was difficult to be in a world I didn’t understand. Later, even to be lucky enough to go to a private school, institutionalisation and the post Blairite days obscured these sorts of issues as part and parcel of our ‘global city’ and muddied the systemic biases that no one, lest myself seemed to be able to articulate coherently.
While playground racism is almost extinct today, racism very much remains. Racism today is not as simple as calling someone a bad word, but a murkiness in the system that had always failed to nourish people of colour. A system whose blood runs also in the discipline we find ourselves in, Architecture.
Much of this research is motivated by my own lived experiences and supported by friends and allies resisting this system. The lengthy conversations with staff and friends that this work prompted lead to a lot of anger at these systems, and subsequently a very productive research investigation. I’ve been astounded and disheartened that a critical look on the discipline of architecture through the lens of class and race seems vastly unattended to, and this frustration also added to the work.
As a result, this project quickly became bigger and bigger as it grew in parallel with my studio thesis, activism work and events organising. What was intended to be 3000 word essay, grew to become more of a 7000 word thesis. I am very grateful to have been supported not only by Eleni in exploring my research interest, but also the many other practitioners, academics and students for whom these words have resonated with.
To those who kindly read all of this, thank you, and hope these words continue to grow and spark a power to resist the matrix of domination around us.
As I write this essay, the UK is facing the biggest series of strikes in recent history. After sporadic civil protests following years of austerity measures and the erosion of worker protections, the brutality of the cost of living crisis has forced many to confront a bleak winter.
Despite large corporations and energy companies earning record level profits since the pandemic, many workers have been faced with stark choices of which room to heat to be able to maintain their living.
In contrast, architects have historically been resistant to unionisation and continue to be a murky group to organise. Theorists like Peggy Deamer would argue that this resistance comes from the ideological hang up that architects do not consider their immaterial labour¹ as work, but rather, a cult like “calling” that does not consider the material conditions of labour.²
I would argue that this ideology is inherently tied to what the journalists and social activists Barbara and John Ehrenreich described as the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) in their essay in Radical America, 1977.³ It’s through the reading of the Ehrenreich’s that we can understand the architects role in obfuscating their self image in relation to an antagonistic class position against the working labourer. Using the original framework of the Ehrenreich’s allows us to understand the architect’s position in relation to class as a specific form of knowledge protection that continues to influence architectural
Introductionpractice and education today. In doing so we can recognise that the architect requires domination as a foundational warrant to its class existence in what the Ehrenreich’s would describe as ‘benign domination’.⁴
This essay does not deal with unionising or specifically dwell on further discourse regarding the architectural worker, but sets the case that the architect must be read as a member of the Professional Managerial Class to understand the broader complexities of the architect as a class group, and not just a job. Subsequently, this forces us to reconcile the intersections of class with race and gender.
In part 2 of this paper I take the framework of the PMC as a starting point to describe a racialised barrier between who is allowed to be a member of this class and that the architecture profession is very much complicit in a continued structural bias against people of colour. Decolonial theorist Maria Lugones is key in linking the idea of benign domination with decolonial concepts such as the ‘Coloniality of Power’.⁵ Through a reading of the white collar architect in the lens of the coloniality of power we can trace the PMC’s wider reliance on oppression to give itself credibility.
Finally, these ideas are culminated in a snapshot reading of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) through its remaining colonial imagery and whether a new black presidentelect and CEO help to address these inherent challenges to the profession.
The paper ends with a conclusion that reforming a PMC apparatus like the RIBA and its subsequent racialised power structures is likely to be impossible and subsequently, dissolution of the profession should be seriously considered.
Much of the framework of how we define class and labour stems from the work of Marx, in particular the orthodox understanding of the two classes: The Capitalist or Bourgeoisie, and the Proletarian or The Working Class. What Barbara and John Ehrenreich realised in 1976 was that the changing demographics and social conditions of their time had meant that a binary reading of class was no longer as clear cut as Marx had made in the 19th century.⁶ Traditionally, all those who were wage labourers were considered members of the Working class. Yet, increasing numbers of more educated managerial and technical workers were emerging as a wage earning group distinct to the poor working class. Somehow, orthodox Marxism could not explain or capture the oxymoron of an educated, managerial labourer who was also a wage labourer. How should we treat those that fall into what we still refer today as the ‘middle class’?
In the case of the highly educated Ehrenreich’s, their view was that the very liberal left wing institutions like universities and the political parties that they themselves were active in, had failed to acknowledge this new ‘middle class’. They argued that this group could and should be engaged with more as a political demographic in itself.⁷
To therefore first accept a distinct class defined by a generational or historical pattern, the Ehrenreich’s identified that this specific class group could be traced back in time to the industrialisation of labour and the
Taylorist methods of efficient management of work. Viewing capitalism in the early 20th century is to understand it as a context where the Bourgeoisie required and exploited the Proletariats’ physical labour. Through controlling this means of production and the surplus value of worker’s labour, the Bourgoeoisie are able to generate vast wealth for themselves. In the process of a few wealthy men managing large numbers of labourers, often with no educational background, economic efficiency dictated a need for a hitherto unseen management system to order the masses in what Frederic W. Taylor would describe in the ‘Principles of Scientific Management’ . ⁸
In an efficient system of optimization and value production, Taylorism and the advent of scientific management was essential in setting up the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) as a function of telling others what to do. The function of the PMC in the case of Taylorism was therefore to apply supposed rational scientific methods to exert a clear power relation over manual labourers.
“The PMC, […] is employed by capital and it manages, controls, has authority over labor (though it does not directly employ it).”⁹
They continue to outline that the PMC is essential to both “capital accumulation” and
“to the process of reproducing capitalist social relations”. 10
The distinction that the Ehrenreich’s make here is very important as it sets out the oxymoron of the PMC’s existence. On the one hand, the PMC is a wage labourer just like a proletariat and they do not own or acquire capital as a result of their own or others labour. Yet, the power relation over manual labourers clearly sees them as closer to the Bourgeoisie.
Furthermore, the Ehrenreich’s also identify that the PMC emerges as a class self-aware of its own difference from the working class. The power relation the PMC received in their roles associated with their Capitalist masters was something that needed to be protected. Of course, if one has it better off than others, and is aware of this, you would work to protect those interests. So ‘the Profession’ was born as a way to validate whether someone is an expert, or expert enough to be a scientific manager. ‘Engineers’ and ‘Scientists’ could use their professional label to hold value of its own accord to protect and control their position as technocratic managers of the PMC. The profession therefore becomes an apparatus through which the PMC is formed, “representing simultaneously both the aspirations of the PMC and the claims which are necessary to justify those aspirations to the other classes of capitalist society.” 11
The Ehrenreich’s continue that the framework of the profession as an apparatus for the PMC relies on the following attributes:
(a) The existence of a specialized body of knowledge, accessible only by lengthy training
(b) The existence of ethical standards which include a commitment to public service
(c) A measure of autonomy from outside interference in the practice of the profession (e.g., only members of the profession can judge the value of a fellow professional’s work).
(citation ibid)
The claims to specialized knowledge and ethical standards serve to justify the bid
for autonomy, which is most commonly directed at the (capitalist) employing class. Furthermore, the possession (or claim to possession) of specialized knowledge ensures that the PMC can control its own reproduction as a class: “Lengthy” training has barred working-class entrance to the professions given a decided advantage to the children of the PMC itself. The claim to high ethical standards represents the PMC’s persistent reassurance that its class interests are identical to the interests of society at large. Finally, all three characterises of professions are aimed at ensuring that the relationship between the individual professional and his or her ‘client’ (student, patient) is one of benign domination.
Although these definitions are originally intended to define occupations such as the Scientist and Engineer, it will be of no surprise that the class systems of the PMC are applicable also to the discipline of architecture. Through a reading of the Ehrenreich’s we can identify three main attributes that define the PMC and subsequently the Architect as part of this white collar group.
Firstly, one can note the confusion of the class group; the uncertainty manifested in the PMC’s wage labour but power relation against the orthodox working class. The PMC does not gain capital, and so is antagonistic to capitalists, yet their interests are aligned against the working class due to their function as a maintaining a power relation on behalf of the capitalist.
Architecture in this way is the same. Architects will design and coordinate for a project to be completed, usually for the goal of capital accumulation in the form of property but will not themselves be responsible for the manual labour of such work. Indeed, the practice of design itself, of drawing and detailing, is a type of knowledge work that exists as a way of organising labour to work efficiently and measurably in ‘the right technical and economic way’.
I would therefore say that ‘design’ operates as a Taylorist instruction to the labourer, a visual and material manifestation of the both the knowledge work of the architect as well as their power relation between the capitalist and the proletariat. In this we way can match the architect as a member of the PMC, and ‘Design’ as their function to maintain this social order. Drawing is related and is a material manifestation that we can use to trace these relationships but is a product of the PMC’s work, separate to the architect’s core function. The Architects are therefore able to enforce a power relation against the manual labourer through architectural drawing as well as more typically associated managerial work such as coordination management and other document control processes.
12.
It is important to note that despite the preoccupation with drawings and design as the single pure pursuit of the architect in recent years, this fetishization of the drawing has led to further confusion from architects on their association with labour management. Drawings thus create distance between the architect and the worker. This abstraction of labour does not chang the fact that architects, through the function of design, and therefore a power relation set upon labourers, are still instrumental as a capitalist function.
This obfuscation in contemporary architectural practice is perhaps well captured in the late Zaha Hadid’s response to an extensive review by the Guardian of labourer casualties in her Qatar 2022 stadium project. Questioned about 500 Indian and 382 Nepalese migrant deaths she responds; “I have nothing to do with the workers. I think that’s an issue for the government. […] I’m not taking it lightly but I think it’s for the government to look to take care of. It’s not my duty as an architect to look at it.”.12
The language used by Hadid outlines the separation of how she sees herself in relation to the workers, even if they may be dying. The separation is one of management interface in a traditional sense i.e. she is not directly managing labourer. However, this does not remove the fact that design in itself is a manifestation of the influences set out by capitalist interests. The role of Hadid as an individual professional architect within the PMC means that both her work and her position is antagonistic to safe worker conditions because it is not in the capitalists’ interests . This relationship is acknowledged by Hadid by
cannot be further explored in this particular piece.
James Riach, “Zaha Hadid defends Qatar World Cup role following migrant worker deaths”, The Guardian, 25 February 2014, accessed online 7 December 2022 < https://www.theguardian. com/world/2014/feb/25/zaha-hadid-qatar-world-cup-migrant-worker-deaths>
referring to it as a responsibility by the State, the truer master of power relations. She is simply an agent of this power relation.
Corresponding to these contemporary conditions of the PMC, Catherine Liu’s highly critical text “Virtue Hoarding”, reflects through her own position as a member of the New York academic circle that recent years had showed an entrenched and inhumane characteristic had developed in the PMC since the Ehrenreichs had first described it in 1976.13 Although her work in Virtue Hoarding is mostly referring to the political neoliberal elite synonymous with the US Democratic Party and the associations of the Hilary Clinton campaign, her scathing remarks on the class group are equally applicable to that of Architects.
“the most successful and visible segments of the PMC have brazenly put their smarts at the service of the bosses. If Marx theorized that class struggle was the engine of historical change and the political agent of it the proletariat, the newest incarnation of the PMC tries to make history by undermining workingclass power and ignoring working-class interests.”14
It is worth mentioning that have used the Qatar stadium analogy in this case because it is a well known story that has returned to the forefront due to the recent completion of the building and subsequent world cup publicity last year. It is apt to describe the condition of starchitecture and labour relations. However, to assume that Hadid herself is the only one to have done such work would be naive and I think it is important to acknowledge that had the architect in question not been a women of colour, nor perhaps in a gulf country, that the attention it received, and therefore our knowledge of it in the architectural conscious, may not be so pertinent. This too, is part of a wider problem of the racialisiation of the discipline but alas13. Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2021) 14. ibid. Image of the subsequently completed Qatar world cup stadium, Al Janoub stadium. Rowan Moore, “Qatar World Cup stadiums: pitch fever at any price”, The Guardian, 13 November 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/ nov/13/qatar-world-cup-stadiums-pitch-fever-at-any-price
18.
The second way we can apply the PMC framework towards the architect is the qualification process. As a profession with a protected title, the path to qualify in countries such as the United Kingdom and (and many other countries) is lengthy, expensive and arduous. The Ehrenreich’s categorise Specialised knowledge and the training processes gatekeeping as two different apparatus’s of the class’s social reproduction. In the case of Architectural practice today, I will combine them as I believe that knowledge production and knowledge gatekeeping are irrevocably intertwined.
In financial terms, the knowledge accreditation path means that the majority of architecture students graduate with debt of £50,000£60,000, according to a study published by the Architect’s Journal in 2019.15 This figure alone separates the Architect as PMC from those of more traditional working class backgrounds and is designed in this way to maintain social reproduction. This is proven to be the case in with a report in 2021 showing that architecture is the most privileged occupation in the United Kingdom. 16 ‘Privilege’ in this case is defined by a parent holding a university degree or in a management role. In fact, architecture astoundingly out performs law, medicine and art, and is in this case is the most elite member of the PMC in the UK.
In the UK, the Architects Registration Board (ARB) is responsible for upholding a register of all accredited ‘Architects’. A title protected with statutory legislation under the Architects Registration Act 1997, it is intended to protect the public from poor professionalism. The existence of the licensed ‘Architect’ assumes a consumer protection that those looking for architectural services will feel safe with the standard of work delivered from such qualified persons.
The ARB qualification process is just as the Ehrenreich’s describe as instrumental in perpetuating the PMC as an organized group. It ensures that the production of knowledge
is acquired, maintained and protected so as to gatekeep the interests of the PMC while claiming to do a public service.
Knowledge keeping therefore gives children of the PMC an advantage in continuing to be PMC’s rather than become a manual labourer. This social reproduction has led to an intensifying cycle of entrenchment of the ‘expert’ middle class that Liu holds so much contempt for, attributing this rarefication of specialisation as attributable to the political discontent with the establishment. Thus continuing the condition of privilege illustrated in the social mobility report.
“To the majority of non-college-educated people, the PMC increasingly appear as pedantic, hypocritical, and punishing: in authoritarian, science denying conservative leaders, they recognize their own helpless rage and ignorance.”17
Much of the way that PMC’s present themselves, or their value systems is also heavily influenced, if not instructed upon them through the qualification process. In the case of architecture, this pseudo-religious ideology is referred to both Marisa Cortright and Peggy Deamer as “The Calling”. 18,19Deamer recounts how in an architecture symposium a young audience member asks the panellists what to expect from a career in architecture. A panellist infamously replies;
In her prologue, “How did we get here?”, Deamer comments, “For a profession that seems to have it all-architect’s creativity, unlike artists, is professionally sanctioned; we make things that matter to the world-how could we be victims of the same capitalist ideology which, in the form of Christianity, asks the poor to feel righteous about their poverty?”20The material conditions of this ideology are then captured by Cortight’s writing “in 2019, I took issue with what I termed “the myth of the calling”, or the cultural norms that convince architecture students and architects they can and should taken on crippling debt and submit themselves to harsh working conditions in order to “follow their dreams” and “do what they love”. 20
The Calling, therefore finds itself embedded both in the profession in practice, as Deamer identifies, but also feeds into the very material conditions of the student as Cortright writes. In this way the culture of architecture through the process of qualification impresses the need to approach the subject as an enlightened pseudo-religion. In doing so, the profession of architecture is able to not only dictate its own
16. Heather Carey,
17. Liu, 2021, 74
19.
O Brien
Olivia Gable, Social
in the Creative Economy: Rebuilding and levelling up?, Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, September 2021
unassailable truths of knowledge reproduction, but through the gatekeeping process of accreditation also prevents those of less means or patience for unrecognised labour in study or practice. This lengthy architectural training system indoctrinates an ideology that asks its subjects to feel grateful for their own lack of agency.
“Architecture is not a career. It is a calling!”.
Finally is what the Ehrenreich’s describe as “benign domination”. The Ehrenreich’s originally set out that a) the desire for autonomy through the capitalist, b) specialised knowledge, and c) the professional training process that locks out the working class together to form a basis to benign domination on their subjects. Doctors over their patients, the Teacher to the Student.
In the Ehrenreic’s definition, Benign Domination is succinct in capturing the condition of the PMC in regards to its existence as a power relation, but also the ideological belief that their work is done in good faith. Benign Domination articulates the PMC’s position as individuals to dominate others and as their own main character in stratas of labour oppression. In parallel this serves to identify the paradox of the PMC as a kind oppressor. As described previously the PMC’s identity relies on the formation of a power imbalance through the association of the capitalist. Exploitation, and Domination, must occur for the PMC to exist.
Benign domination is what I would argue is a core element to the cultural ideological origin point of the professional managerial class in regards to architecture. Architects sincerely believe that their work is to make a better place, that their higher tastes and training process means they can work on behalf the public interest. This altruism is not new and Taylor can be quoted with a similar optimism on this power relation with wider societal good;
“the same principles can be applied with equal force to all social activities: to the management of our tradesmen, large and small; of our churches, our philanthropic institutions, our universities, and our governmental departments… what other reforms could do as much toward promoting prosperity, toward the diminution of poverty and the alleviation of suffering?”22
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/
The formation of the PMC as a distinct class group based is to accept an entire class group of power holders exists. To be in the PMC means that power is being exercised over others, that power must be taken away from others for to maintain this particular class interest. As the Ehrenreich’s summarise with the term ‘Benign Domination’, the power relationship inherent in the PMC relies on domination.
Although theorists like the Ehrenreichs have created a framework to explore class
distinctions and the effects of their power structures, they tend to take a Eurocentric vantage that fail to take into account the intersectionality of race, gender and queerness. While this paper could critique the work of the Ehrenreichs as well as other theorists such as Bordieu, Foucault, Marx and Lazzarato for their omission of race and gender, it would only serve to perpetuate a white male academic branch of social reproduction to do so. Therefore, to further understand the ramifications of the managerial class and the architect’s role in contemporary systems of
power, we have to read these power relations through a minority lens and consciously use theoretical frameworks typically outside of the Eurocentric architectural discourse.
Certainly in the United Kingdom, class is a matter of cultural significance in everyday positioning. As Reni Eddo-Lodge identifies anecdotally in her seminal text “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race”, the U.K public generally sees class struggle as a more pertinent conversation over race.23 This binary reading of class and race as distinctly separate is rightly contested by Eddo-Lodge. When we do not see that problems affecting those of BAME backgrounds and of women of colour, we exclude and disenfranchise them – subsequently leading to the title and frustration that lead to the title of this seminal book. Eddo-Lodge highlights the 2013 Great British Class Survey, commissioned by the BBC, which split the Marxist class groups into seven. The study is organised through a reading of property ownership, cultural interests and socialisation with professional groups such as ‘scientists’ or ‘Chief Executives’. We can observe that this survey is loosely combining the work of Bordieu and Marx (which could be critiqued itself, as well as the somewhat buzz-feed quiz like interface, but we will acknowledge it can be used as a tool). Of these seven groups, the last two, the ‘emergent service worker’ and
‘precariat’ have the least financial security, although the former is more likely to have gone to university. What the study was useful in doing was also that it collected information of race in the participants of the study. The study found that most people of colour find themselves in the emergent service workers’ group, making up 21 per cent of it. “We’re also over twice as likely to be found in the emergent service worker’ group than in the traditional working-class group. And materially, we are actually poorer. I say ‘we’, because according to the calculator, I am an emergent service worker, along with 19 per cent of the population. We tend to be young, and we live in urban areas.” 24
Eddo-Lodge continues to outline that the census data in 2011, published in 2014 showed that black men aged between 16 to 64 have the highest unemployment rates in the country, and that black women are more likely to be unemployed than white women. 25 To many this information will be hardly surprising, and associate that higher education and the pathway to professionalisation as key avenues to ameliorate this dire scenario. However, what Eddo-Lodge also highlights is that the Trades Union Congress had found that black employees were not only paid less than their white counterparts, it actually widened with higher qualifications.
“Black people with education up to GSCE level were paid 11 per cent less. Black people with Alevels saw an average of 14 per cent less pay, and university-educated black graduates saw a gap of, on average, 23 per cent less pay than their white peers. A cap, gown and degree scroll does nothing to shield black graduates from discrimination.”26
This alarming information is congruous with a recent report form the Policy and Evidence Centre, “Social mobility in the Creative Economy” 2021 which not only showed that Architecture was the most privileged occupation in the United Kingdom but also that in London, there is no statistical difference in the likelihood of entering the Creative Industry (like architecture) if a BAME student is privileged. 27Their white privileged counterparts are twice as likely in comparison. Privilege in this case as being defined by if one or more parents of a child is a middle managerial or in a professional role. In other words, a person of colour has the same chance of entering an industry like architecture, no matter if their parents had found themselves in the middle class, or if they were working class.
Viewing this information through the lens of Benign Domination and the PMC, we see that the process of qualification and attrition within practice culminates into a racialised reading of who is allowed to be an architectural professional. The apparatus of Benign Domination is mostly for the white and privileged based in the metropole of London.
Although we would assume that the professional body of architects in the United Kingdom would also be tracking this information, unfortunately the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) does not publish specific data on class barriers to the same level of analysis as the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre. The RIBA’s own internal surveys do however still reveal a similarly
haunting data set. In its RIBA educational report of the year 2019/2020, it reported that intake of part 1 applications, the first rung in the accreditation process registered by the ARB, had a total non-white demographic of 47.1%. By the time of completing the last stage of accreditation at part 3, this figure drops to 23.6%. 28
The pattern continues in practice. Ethnic data on RIBA chartered members is not regularly published. However, in the 2017 annual RIBA report not only is it quite comical that there are three tiers of white ethnic group categorisations, self-reported non-white members accounted for a meagre 12% of the total RIBA membership group.
The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre report summaries the key junctions to which class related disadvantage occurs in the creative occupations. They are from early life, post-16 education, transition to work, in-work progression and advancement. We can trace almost every part of the architects PMC path as being exclusionary towards BAME individuals.29
From Eddo-Lodge’s analyses of A-Level and GCSE success as in fact detrimental to pay for black students, to the almost halving of people of colour in architectural education, to the in-work registered RIBA member as an even smaller proportion. The reality today, is that architecture knowledge gatekeeping remains inherently racialised. The system of creating the architect as professional managerial class structurally leans predominantly to the privileged white male.
As we defined earlier, the Professional Managerial Class relies on the awkward power relation between the proletariat and the capitalist. Despite the fact that the PMC is a wage earner defined by their labour rather than capital assets or accumulation, the PMC enforces an oppression over the proletariat as a foundational warrant to their class’s existence. Despite this class violence, the PMC claims to serve a ‘public’ good and sincerely believes that their professionalism has altruistic aims. This dichotomy between perceived altruism and class oppression is summarised in what the Ehrenreich’s describe as ‘Benign Domination’.
What I would argue is that ‘Benign Domination’ is analogous to feminist and de-colonial theorists’ analyses of industrial colonialization. As the PMC emerges from Taylorism and the development of industrial technology in the early 20th century as a means to manage others, their power comes at the removal of others’ power. While the Ehrenreich’s and other euro-American theorists have written on these relationships, they forget to consider that the Euro-American context relied on the exploitation of other racialised groups. This historical and social context of Power in its relation to Colonialization and Western Imperialism are more defined in fields outside of the Architectectural discourse.
In Maria Lugones’ essay “The Coloniality of Gender” (2008), she posits an intersectional analysis of the post-colonial theorist Anibal Quijano’s key text “The Coloniality of Power”. Quijano’s contribution to define the modalities of power is important to first note - that the global euro centred capitalist power as a macro structure can be defined as follows. 30
“Quijano understands that all power is structured in relations of domination, exploitation and conflict as social actors fight over control of “the four basic areas of human existence: sex, labor, collective authority and subjectivity/intersubjectivity, their resources and products.” What is characteristic of global, Eurocentred, capitalist power is that is organised around two axes that Quijano terms, “the coloniality of power” and “modernity” (Quijano ,2000b, 342) The axes order the disputes over control of each area of existence in such a way that the meaning and forms of domination in each area thoroughly infused by the coloniality of power and modernity.” 31
Reading this part of Quijano/Lugones is to understand that all forms of power exist on the intersection of domination and conflict over another group’s body in terms of its sexuality, perceived productivity, collective agency and subsequently their resources.
This power relation is manifested through the “coloniality of power” and “modernity”. The PMC and the architect’s benign domination can clearly be seen as analogous to these intersections and in particular in relating to Quijano’s axis of modernity. Modernity plays directly into the ideological altruism of the Taylorist scientific management of efficiency, productivity and technology. It also helps us to qualify that as benign as the Eurocentric white scientific manager may think it to be, domination and modernity are still ultimately tools to oppress. Thus Quijano’s work helps us understand that modernity and domination, two principles central to the ideology of the PMC, are synonymous with the broader reading of Coloniality.
Lugones articulates that Quijano misses the crucial element of exploring the intersections of gender and coloniality in his argument. Power is not just simply the systems of a European state on a colonial vassal as large embodiments
of the male default vantage, but also relies on the associated labour from the colonies. Sexuality and the domination of bodies is key to the coloniality of power. Lugones reads these differences in the intersection of gender and race through a critique of the historical narratives of women’s rights reminiscent of Eddo-Lodge’s contemporary frustrations that lead to her book “Why I don’t talk to white people about race”.
“in the development of twentieth century feminisms, the connection between gender, class, heterosexuality as racialized was not made explicit. That feminism centred its struggle and its ways of knowing and theorizing against a characterization of women as fragile, weak in both body and mind, secluded in the private, and sexually passive. […] Indeed, beginning from that characterization, white bourgeois feminists theorized white womanhood as if all women were white.” 32
This is important. If those not characterised as non-human by their lack of inclusion in the definition of womanhood, they were then equated to nature or children. From the eyes of the coloniality of power, the non-human that is a person of colour not characterized by Eurocentric visions of gender are resources to be developed. Nature is something to be tamed, and children are to be raised. Such that racialized “women” needed to be modified to fit, they needed to be assimilated to be both useful and closer to human. The PMC’s benign domination and its adherence to modernity would be part of this coloniality of power, racialised and gendered groups become altruistic missions to enhance.
Lugones outlines that women who did not find themselves within this particular categorization of womanhood are therefore not considered as women. From the Eurocentric gender binary those that are not men, but also not within this description of women would therefore be understood as not human.
“Females excluded from that description were not just their subordinates. They were also understood to be animals in a sense that went further than the identification of white women with nature, infants, and small animals. They were understood as animals in the deep sense of “without gender,” sexually marked as female, but without the characteristics of femininity. Women racialized as inferior were turned from animals into various modified versions of “women” as it fit the processes of Eurocentered global capitalism.” 33
The RIBA is key in tracing Lugones’ coloniality of power. Although the ARB is the legal governing body that registers accredited architects and the subsequent progress of its students, its creation as a registration body was formed directly from lobbying by the RIBA in the early 20th century. It is through this early history of the institute that we are able to grasp that the architectural discipline as we know today was primarily formed by the RIBA as a text book case of the Professional Managerial Class. Much of this history can be read in Designs for Democracy by Neal Shasore (2022), the first critical history of its kind during the pivotal time period that coincides with Taylorist Scientific Management and the embedding of the Great British Empire.34 Taking a specific view of some of the ornament within the 66 Portland Place Headquarters however allows us to take a direct link to Lugones’ coloniality of power.
Inside the RIBA’s public lecture hall in its basement at its London headquarters, the Jarvis Hall, which often hosts the high profile RIBA Gold Medal presentations as well as other industry events, features a large scale mural depicting the coloniality of power. The mural illustrates the RIBA council as a central formation of learned men, faceless and homogenous while they are surrounded by caricatured figures of colonial subjects. Clustered around the power centre and the subjects of coloniality are also institutional buildings such as the Architectural Association’s
Bedford Square as apparatus’ of civilisation. The figures themselves are drawn to be shown as primitive and docile in nature, where the female figures are often baby holding, performing domestic labour, or representing frailty. Generally all of these formations of indigenous groups are not only composed as satellites around the RIBA council but their body language also framed to lean towards the faceless British men.
These depictions intrinsically capture the architects role in the coloniality of power; the central council chamber spreads knowledge and civilisation to the lesser peoples of its empire. They look on to their oppressors while the council espouses its self-declared altruism of a global democracy. It also spatialises that people of colour, or those who are not already assimilated as the Eurocentric cultural homogony are excluded from higher civilisation and decision making within the council chamber. Knowledge is gifted as a one way power structure to the lesser minorities to make the white man feel more learned. It’s in this benign domination that we also understand that for the eurocentric, architect PMC, others had to be placed under them in the power structure for them to lift themselves up. Power always came at a cost of the agency of others, but the racialisation of this condition is made clear by the disappearing screen. In this way, the colonial subject as resource and less-thanhuman project is a visual manifestation of the RIBA’s problematic applications of Quijano/ Lugones’ coloniality of power and modernity. The RIBA is modern, civilised, and developed. Indigenous subjects are primitive, weak, nonhuman.
The RIBA’s colonial imagery is also evident in the ‘Dominion Screen’ in the Florence Hall, another public space in the headquarters building on the first floor. This is often used as an events and catering space as well as to host awards ceremonies. The central artwork at the main facing interior is a wooden sculpted screen that depicts the dominions of the British Empire. Australia, South Africa, India, Canada and New Zealand are illustrated in the screen from left to right as a vertically organised matrix of the British Empire. This screen
is also made in such a way that its colonial subjects are drawn as a racialised ‘other’ of less developed peoples. However, the key difference of representation in this artwork compared to the disappearing screen is that qualities of the natural environment of the colonies is also made apparent. Its flora, fauna and natural resources are captured in the matrix of the screen alongside its caricatured subjects. Its here that we can see Lugones’ coloniality of gender more closely – those that have been deemed not man, nor white bourgeois woman are equated to that of nature or children. It’s telling that all symbolic elements are categorised and given equal spatial constraint, a humble square, and placed together. It becomes a matrix of imperial resources. In doing so, the dominion screen flattens the person of colour in the colonial power system to become something to be tamed, extracted and modified. Mother nature, melanin and mineral are to be assimilated into the British capitalist machine of development.
You may be asking, in 2022 how and why these representations still find themselves in very public spaces in the central architectural authority in the United Kingdom? It is not only the RIBA’s own governance that has sat silently through what many would describe as abhorrent vestiges of British history, but also the hundreds, if not thousands of architects, journalists and other ‘experts’ who have sat in the lecture hall or danced and dined in the Florence hall for almost a hundred years. As the Ehrenreich’s described in 1970 of course, it is not in the PMC’s interest to highlight their own role in oppression. Pathways to the profession is also a way to discredit critique that comes from outside it, but if those people in the profession are both indoctrinated by the pseudo religious ‘calling’ of architecture and overwhelmingly align with the same European male demographic as their colonial forebearers, it is unrealistic to think that change could have ever occurred. The institution of architecture itself, so entangled in its own self-referential narrative that Catherine Liu is so critical of, finds itself, in the case of 66 Portland Place, at the heart of a coloniality of power.
There will be some argument, especially with the recent competition for the updating of the building as a ‘house for architecture’, that perhaps the best scenario is to take the work down. Like topplings of colonial statues in the wake of the George Floyd protests of 2020, much discussion could be had about if these symbols should be taken down, how and whether it is more prudent to highlight and discuss our problematic histories in a museum or otherwise.35 In the case of the RIBA and the U.K institution of architecture, I think this is a moot point and a distraction. The sad reality is that many people of colour already understand themselves as needing to assimilate, that the rules of life were different if your skin colour was different or if you did not confirm to ideals of the binary gender. Although these artworks are offensive, the main cause of harm is not the art itself, but the system that built itself on the backs of exploitation and continues to do so.
The main focus of reading the coloniality of power is to understand that the network of power relations needs to be understood in its sider context, especially in the case of the profession of architecture and the RIBA. Influencing the governance and decision making processes at such an institution is essential in providing any material change to these relations of power. Recent grassroots organising from decentralised groups have proven an uplifting change in the governance structure of the RIBA.36 Muyiwa Oki has been both the youngest and the first black presidentelect in the RIBA’s near two hundred year history. This has been rightly hailed as a major shift in the institutions symbolic seat of white male power. Additionally, with the appointment of CEO Valerie Vaughan-Dick as both the first woman and BAME individual in the post, one could feel excited that progress is on the way.37
To say that two of the most prestigious roles in the institution being held by people of colour is a huge moment would be quite the understatement. No longer are we relegated as a subordinate function outside of the council chamber as in the disappearing screen, but actually embedded into the decision making process. To be taken critically with the eyes of Lugones however, I worry that this great
symbolic moment is simply another way to assimilate individuals of colour into a system that was built in the image of the capitalist white collar white colour architect. We could therefore read these governance shifts as a success of the oppressive colonial power structures, that colonial subjects had, after almost 100 years of the 66 Portland Place building’s completion, been successfully transformed into fellow benign dominators. This is not to say that Oki or Vaughan-Dick are oppressor-imitators, to discredit their hard work and validity as talented individuals in their own right. Nor is it my intention to diminish the sheer earth quakingly important democratic and representational changes in the profession through their successes. It is however crucial that we are careful that the historical altruism of the white man’s mission to enhance its subjects in the pursuit of modernity is not repeated here.
So the question begs to be asked, what can Oki and Vaughan-Dick achieve in their positions as president and CEO? The difficulty of the presidency role at the RIBA is that their term is only two years, and within their first year, their replacement is already voted in. In any job, it would realistically take longer than a year to cultivate support among your peers. Made much more challenging by their swift departure, we could imagine many staff members would not take the president’s power as particularly useful. Additionally, the President does not hold a position on the RIBA executive board, the main power structure. The president’s main role is to chair the RIBA council, a body that now is only advisory to the supervision and guidance of the board. Effectively then, it seems the presidency role is mostly ceremonial.
So we might say that Vaughan-Dick is where the power can be wielded for actual change, right? That’s what the CEO is for after all, they sit at the apex of the board. This is true. However, we can understand from bylaw documentation and annual reports that the board’s ultimate responsibility is as trustees of the RIBA’s charitable status.38 Like Directors in Companies House, the board of trustees are named individuals on the public record
for whether they are complying with the legal and governmental requirements set upon them. In the case of the RIBA, the charitable group reports against its own constitutional documentation as set up in their Royal Charter of 1837. The challenge of board of trustees at the RIBA is that this constitutional charter itself, written in 1837, confirms the very structural inequities a CEO or president might want to change. It reaffirms the Ehrenreich’s PMC definitions of knowledge acquisition and gate keeping “for the general advancement of Civil Architecture and for promoting and facilitating the acquirement of the knowledge of the various Arts and Sciences connected therewith.” 39 The charter continues in the next sentence in illustrating the coloniality of power, “It being an Art esteemed and encouraged in all enlightened nations as tending greatly to promote the domestic convenience of Citizens and the Public improvement”. Here the charter clearly states that art, and architecture as an art is only for those who are esteemed and enlightened. Not only does this refer to a colonial internal gatekeeping convention of the PMC, but by referring to ‘enlightened’ nations in relation to the domestic convenience, the charter also recognises the euro centric vantage of enlightenment and modernity to be used for the priority of the State’s domestic benefit.
It is therefore my position that no matter how effective, empathetic or empowering VaughanDick and Oki are in their respective roles, nothing can be done to institutional reform the RIBA without first writing an entirely different constitution. Being a historical-membershipbody-cum-charity, the RIBA’s challenge is that its masters are multiple and complex. As a charity it must report to the 1. Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 2. as a Royal Charter must report to Privy Council, and 3. as a membership body must report to its chartered members. We could imagine that with the encouraging developments in the governance representation that the path of history could arc to a justice that materialises constitutional amendment. It is however not within the PMC’s interest to jeopardise its strategic advantages in this way and if at all possible, could realistically take another
hundred years to achieve.
At this junction I would therefore argue, like Deamer, for the de-professionalisation of the architectural discipline as a whole. 40 As a student of architecture at one of the very institutional apparatuses of this structure, the Architectural Association, I am also an emergent service worker, a person of colour, an immigrant and passionate about capital A, Architecture. These questions both affect and embody me. I am part of this complex system. It pains me then, that the institution where I asked for Peter Zumthor to sign a book when I was 17, seems to have no viable method to change when its very operating model relies on structures of oppression.
Just like discussions on removing artwork, arguments of reform are useful but limited. We must address the core harm. It is time to abolish the RIBA, the ARB and ask – what is the model that reflects our material aspirations today?
(as amended by Supplemental Charters dated 7 March 1887 and 10 February 1971)
William the Fourth by the Grace of God of the United K ngdom of Grea Br a n and Ireland K ng
De ender of the Fa th To all to whom these Presents shall come Greeting Whereas Our R gh Trus y and Right W e beloved Cousin and Counci lor Thomas Philip Ear De Grey hath by his Pe i on humbly represented unto us That he and divers other of our ov ng sub ects have asso c ated together or the purpose of form ng an Inst ution or the general advancem en of C v Arch tecture and for promot ng and aci ta ng the acquiremen of the know edge of the various Arts and Sc ences connec ed therew th It be ng an Art es eemed and encouraged n a en ghtened nat ons as tend ng great y to promote the domestic conven ence of C t zens and the Publ c im provemen and embellishment of Towns and C t es and have subscr bed and paid cons derable sums of m oney or those purposes and have ormed a co ect on of Books and W orks of Art and have established a Correspondence w h Learned and Scient c Men n Fore gn Countr es or the purpose of Inquiry and Inform at on upon he subject of the sa d art And that they have been adv sed tha the object of thei undertak ng would be more ef ectual y attained were the same to receive ou Ro ya Sanc ion and Con irmat on and hey have besough us o grant to them and to those who sha l hereafter become Mem bers of the same Soc ety our Roya Charter of Incorporation or he purposes aforesa d Now know ye That we be ng des rous of encourag ng a des gn so laudable and sa utary of our especial grace certa n know edge and m ere m ot on Have w lled granted and dec ared and Do by these presents for us our heirs and successors w grant and dec are Tha the said Thomas Ph p Earl De Grey and such o hers of our loving sub ects as have form ed themselves nto and are now Mem bers of the sa d Soc ety or who shal at any me herea ter become Mem bers thereof accord ng to such Regu at ons or Bye Laws as shal be herea ter framed or enacted shall by v rtue of these presents be the Mem bers of and orm one Body Polit c and Corporate for the purposes aforesa d by the nam e of “ The Institute of Br tish Architects ” by which name they sha have perpe ual success on and a Common Sea w h ull power and author ty to a ter vary break and renew he same at hei d scret on and by the same name to sue and be sued imp ead and be im pleaded answer and be answered un o n every Cour of us our he rs and successors n Witness whereof W e have caused hese ou Le ters to be made Patent Witness Ourse at ou Palace a W estm nster the Eleventh day of Janua y n the Seventh Year of Our Re gn.
By Writ of Privy Seal EdmundsBarbara and John Ehrenreich, “The Professional-Managerial Class”, Radical America Vol 11, no,2 March-April 1977, 7-31
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