Embodied Labor
Experiments in Architectural Representation
“If every line we draw affects a string of material practices with an ecological impact, it also affects a series of labor practices that impact human rights.”
-Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, So-Il
Excerpt from the Grace Farms Design for Freedom Foundation Report
Photo: REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
Global systems of modern-day slavery currently hold millions of people in conditions of forced or coerced labor. While disturbing histories of slavery are generally acknowledged, they are often relegated as issues of the past or of faraway places. As such, contemporary manifestations of this condition are too frequently overlooked. A recent report published by the Grace Farms Design for Freedom Foundation points out the construction industry as the second highest ranking sector in terms of risk of forced labor, meaning that the possibility that these conditions are involved at some point in a building's lifecycle, from material extraction to construction, is alarmingly high.
As leaders in an industry so closely involved with this condition, it becomes a moral imperative for architects to acknowledge this reality and share in the responsibility of affecting change towards its end.
In the report, a series of essays and interviews with practitioners and academics highlighted two key obstacles making this complex issue difficult to resolve.
The first obstacle discussed was the difficulty of recognizing these conditions, given the opaque and globalized nature of the construction industry. The complex and disaggregated nature of this system renders these issues invisible unless they are explicitly looked for. Even when they are looked for, the opacity that such complexity breeds makes them difficult to see. There is an obstacle of visibility.
The second major obstacle identified was the limited individual agency that can result from issues of such scale and complexity. This obstacle can be further exacerbated by the conceptual and geographic distance often placed between architects and laborers. In the report, founding partners of SO-IL Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu stated, “If every line we draw affects a string of material practices with an ecological impact, it also affects a series of labor practices that impact human rights.”
This statement calls attention to the political agency embedded within the architectural drawing. As such, engaging this agency becomes crucial for enabling change.
To address these obstacles of visibility and agency, this project reflects an attempt to engage the critical potential embedded within conventions of architectural representation. A large body of work informed the theoretical framework which helped guide this pursuit. Authors such as Micheal Young, Mark Wigley, Simone Brott, John May, Sanford Kwinter, and Sylvia Lavin were among the most prominent influences.
Great influence was also drawn from art history, specifically through studying the relationship between idealism and realism in the arts. Throughout history, dominant periods of idealism were repeatedly accompanied and contradicted by radical movements of realism. In this way, artists were able to challenge platonic notions of ‘what should be’ by focusing on ‘what is.’ Often this happened by depicting underrepresented or ‘undesirable’ aspects of society.
Analyzing the architectural landscape through this lens revealed several insights which informed the direction of this project. Contemporary historians and critics have reflected on how today’s architectural imagery often represents platonic reflections of idealized digital models. As a result, the images produced to promote, inform, and represent such projects often portray and privilege this idealized state over the underlying reality upon which they are built.
Analyzing the architectural landscape through this lens revealed several insights which informed the direction of this project. Many historians and critics have reflected on how contemporary architectural imagery often represents platonic reflections of idealized digital models. As a result, the images produced to promote, inform, and represent such projects often portray and privilege this idealized state over the underlying reality upon which they are built.
In an effort to challenge this condition, this project looks to use the same technical means which are often used in service of digital idealism to instead engage a digital realism.
Through a series of non-linear experiments, an attempt was made to explore how architectural representation could open a space for reflection and empathy. One that highlights underlying conditions that are often forgotten, allowing architects and designers to better reflect on where the industry is in relation to where it has been as a means of understanding where we want it to go.
The following series of images reflect various attempts at this pursuit.
A collection of nonlinear and unfinished approaches to developing critical methods of representation.
The beginning steps of a much larger project:
A pursuit for Digital Realism in the architectural image.
Model
Representing hierarchal systems of privilege, access, and visibility embedded in the architectural object.
Section
An expanded representation of the model above. The wrap-around section contains narrative moments representing the people and labor surrounding and supporting this condition.
Collage
Abstracted representations of construction and labor
Detail
Construction documents that narratively focus on the hands and conditions behind material assemblies rather than the material assemblies in isolation..
Plan
Just as the original Nolli Map allowed planners to understand the city of Rome in a new way, the application of poche onto sites of construction allows for a new understanding of the complexity of these systems and the extent of material and labor resources used in projects.
The site of Al Bayt stadium, built for the 2022 Fifa World Cup, was chosen as the site of analysis for this exercise.
Twin
The term “digital twin” refers to the recent practice of developing one-to-one digital copies of cities, their environments, and their inhabitants. These models aim to be perfect, real-time simulations that could inform various decisions from urban planning to governmental policy.
In one of my previous projects titled “21st Century Still Life,” I explored how resolution and scale affect the accuracy and presentation of digital copies. I applied a very similar process that I explored there in this project as well. Here, however, I explored how digital models can differently reflect the same object based on the data sources rather than data resolution.
The data used to inform this ‘digital twin’ of Al Bayt stadium was based on inputs focused on labor conditions surrounding the construction of this tournament’s facilities.
First, a point cloud was extracted from a model of the finished stadium based on statistics from worker deaths. From there, the previous Nolli Map of the construction process was parametrically related to the point cloud in such a way that a new form was generated, representing a new model of digital realism which mirrors the idealized form. Influenced as much by this idealized form as the underlying conditions which created it, this new model serves as a reflection of these conditions.
The hypothesis for this experiment is that when this system is applied to other projects, the reflective objects will share similar formal characteristics. In this way, through continued application, a formal typology of embedded labor will begin to emerge.
This work represents the beginnings of a larger project for me. One that involves the continued development of these ideas, as well as the responsibility to carry what I’ve learned from this process into my future professional and academic pursuits. In the words of Sharon Prince, the CEO and founder of Grace Farms, “Once you know, you can’t unknow it.”
I want to end this by directing any designers and architects who are interested in learning more about issues of forced labor toward the Grace Farms Foundation and their Design for Freedom group. They are an incredible organization doing important work and have abundant resources on this issue. A link to their website can be found below. If nothing else, I hope that this project inspires people to keep learning about this problem.