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IAM Architecture Workers United (AWU) member and former Bernheimer Architecture employee Chris Beck has published his first book, The Labor of Architecture: Creativity, Design, and the Possibility of a New Class Consciousness, through Monthly Review Press. The book explores the intersection of creativity, labor, and class identity specific to the architecture industry: how the growing union movement among architects could change the profession.
Beck, who helped organize Bernheimer Architecture to become the first private-sector architecture firm to unionize in more than 100 years, says his experience with the IAM Union deeply influenced the book’s development.
“A lot of it came out of the work with the IAM and organizing Bernheimer,” said Beck. “Part of the book recounts that story—how we started organizing, what we achieved in our collective bargaining agreement—but it also asks a bigger question: What took so long for architecture to get here? We have unionized teachers, nurses, engineers—so why not architects?”
While writing, Beck drew on his experience teaching at The New School’s Parsons School of Design, where he took courses in philosophy, history, and economics that helped him connect architecture to broader social and labor movements.
You can order Chris’s book here.
“Architecture isn’t very good at thinking about labor and economics,” said Beck. “Taking those classes gave me a better way to talk about the relationship between creativity, class, and inequality and how we can build a more conscious and collective future for designers and architects.”
The book challenges the perception that architecture is a lucrative field for the privileged, instead putting architects into the broader working class with most working people who are often underpaid, overworked, and driven by passion rather than pay.
“It’s not uncommon to graduate with a master’s degree and make $60,000 a year while working 50 or 60 hours a week,” Beck said. “There’s this idea of status and privilege that keeps people going—but that same mindset makes it harder to recognize that we’re workers, too.”
Beck continues to work with Architecture Workers United, consulting with IAM Union organizers and helping expand the movement to more firms across the country. He emphasizes the importance of education and reflection among workers—something he hopes his book will inspire.
“Worker education is really where I want to focus,” Beck said. “I had the privilege to study and write about this, but most people don’t get that opportunity. We need more spaces for working people to step back, reflect, and connect what they do every day to the bigger picture.”
The Labor of Architecture is available now through Monthly Review Press and most independent bookstores. Beck will discuss the book during an upcoming event at Red Emma’s Bookstore in Baltimore on Nov. 6, alongside unionized artists from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
“We’re in an exciting moment,” said Beck. “Architecture workers know something isn’t working. They’re sympathetic to organizing, and we’re just getting started building something new.”
