This is a participatory workshop that explores how everyday activities can be codified into our organizing practices.

What do you reckon? This is a participatory workshop that asks us to imagine interacting with one another outside of hegemonic narratives. References to ritual in architecture may often be informed by spirituality, cultist and alternative lifestyles, expressions and appropriations of indigeneity, or the corporate grindset. Here, ritual refers to small acts we undertake each day, and how these may contribute to our capacity to organize, and relate to each other. Participants will carry out a series of activities as a group that each attempt to codify a mundane ritual between the participants. We will hear a range of responses to these prompts, the responses themselves forming the basis of strategies for practice and organization that may be carried forward by the group within and beyond the temporary virtual window of the Zoom meeting.

Participants should be in a space they are comfortable to move around and make noise in, and are asked to bring a snack for a virtual pot-luck.

Demotic Ritual Practices: What Do You Reckon?

A discussion of the possibility for a Just Transition at the nexus of climate, labor, and the built environment.

As design workers, the building sector’s reliance on the fossil fuel economy affects us every day as we design projects that require material extraction, significant capital investment, and the installation of new energy infrastructure. On top of this, the value of our design work legitimizes capitalist expansion in the built environment. Our agency to change the building sector’s role in social, racial, and environmental violence is limited to our work on individual projects in individual offices. Decades of sustained climate action in the profession have proven that this incremental strategy is bound to fail, because it does nothing to challenge the foundational structure of our relationship to real estate-driven fossil capital.

Our real power lies in collective action centered on the creation of new ways of working, building, and living. This action must unify design workers, builders, and communities–groups traditionally siloed. The climate has reached a global tipping point, and a transition 

 happen. A Just Transition is our opportunity to envision what that change will look like, so that it can happen with us instead of to us.

We are stronger together! To win change in the building industry, we need to organize across the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction divide, with workers in a range of unions. Alone, our power is limited. Together, we have the power to shut the system down and demand immediate, aggressive climate action.

The GND working group formed in 2019 to focus on organizing for ecological justice as it relates to architectural labor, the built environment, and sustainable futures for all. Members of the Working Group reflect many different parts of the architecture, engineering and design industry employed in public, private, and university sectors, ranging from designers and engineers, to educators and researchers. We share a commitment to social and racial justice and a motivation to act urgently in response to the climate crisis. As a working group within the larger Architecture Lobby organization, we do not represent the interests of any single market, industry, or mode of building. We are motivated by the urgency of climate action and committed to long-term collaboration with allied people and groups across policy, practice, and advocacy.

Organizing Architectural Labor for a Just Transition

Inspiring Young Minds to Embrace the "Small": Exploring Their Immediate Environment

Teaching has presented an intriguing dimension of my career, allowing me to engage with students on a conceptual level, something that can be challenging to achieve in a professional context. This presentation revolves around my future aspirations, seen through the perspective of these young minds. We delve into their aspirations for the future and how they can translate these aspirations into design concepts. They explore the present, its underlying factors, and contemplate how their personal lifestyle changes can breathe new life into the immediate environment they inhabit. In the words of Achille Mbembe, the students are encouraged to incorporate every element, including human creations, into their design projects. These projects take the form of architectural studio assignments.

Throughout the course, we engage in discussions about how architecture is an essential societal need. We critically assess its disconnection from people and places and seek ways to address new societal needs. Our goal is to reestablish these connections, with a particular focus on addressing the challenges posed by climate change. The term "Retrofit" is deliberately chosen, as it neither signifies a mere renovation nor a simple repair. The studio acknowledges the environmental state of disrepair and uses this as a foundation to create something new, grounded in empathy. Architecture becomes a conduit for embracing ecology and making a positive impact.

 It would be helpful if the participants could document through sketches the environmental information of their immediate surroundings including the home. They could read The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh, The Dasgupta Review, Dipesh Chakravarthy on Climate change, and Achille Mebembe on Colonialism and the future for everyone and everything

I have been working as an architect in Bangalore, India, since 1991 under the banner of Biome Environmental Solutions (

). Our primary goal is to create environmentally conscious designs that seamlessly blend into the existing urban landscape. We achieve this by minimizing material usage, promoting water positivity, adapting to climate conditions, and fostering biodiversity.

Biome is a dynamic team comprising approximately 50 individuals who collaborate on projects in both the fields of architecture and water management, either collectively or independently. Our most recent endeavour is the publication of our book, Biome Diaries. This publication features contributions from various professionals involved in the construction industry, as well as insights from fellow architects and educators.

Environmental Retrofit: An Academic Journey

Join the fight to take down the carpet plastocracy!

The significant innovations to reduce emission developed by scientists and technicians at Milliken and other companies, which if expropriated and placed under rational democratic control, could be an essential component of future industry.  While the political will to achieve this shows, at present, little sign of coalescing, such a movement will hopefully build strength. In the meantime . . . ,

Martin Weiner is an architectural worker with nearly 30 years’ experience, primarily in the commercial interiors sector. His current interests center around climate action and architectural labor. He is a longtime member of The Architecture Lobby and founding member of The Alternative Building Industry Collective. He tweets under the handle @m_hotmessgandhi.

Architecture in the Plasticene - Milliken and the AIA

Have fun, Be in community, Build something together

The Opening sessions for the ABC School will cover administration and logistics, introduce the team, schedule and contributors and talk a little bit about what was behind this year's school. We will also launch the 

 - inviting participants to set up profiles and contribute to this growing community resource. 

 - so we hope these sessions will start imagining how we might belong to people and place, ways to gather, and how to have fun while organizing for meaningful change. The opening plenary will be active and participatory and open up a space to meet others and share thoughts, ideas and resources. 

We are hosting two opening events this year to capture a multitude of timezones. You are more than welcome to attend both to meet more people, however the content will be largely the same. 

ABC event series, where the pressure is low, the people are friendly, and the space is made for low-key gathering and idea sharing. 

Simon Glaister