Architect as Platform Worker: Platform Capitalism, Big Tech and Architectural Labour

Abstract

In 2015, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab announced the nations’ progression towards a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” — Hallmarked by another disruptive surge in technological advancement — including developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, and Big Data. This wave of innovation has since intensified the growth and expansion of sophisticated internet platforms. Reverberations range from empowering industry disruptors established during the dot-com bubble, to the sanctioning of new ventures and start-ups, whom both thrive upon the turmoil and regulatory obfuscations of the “sharing economy”. While common Industries such as retail, hospitality and taxi were formerly disrupted by platforms like Amazon, Airbnb and Uber, further developments in tech and an undersupply of regulatory action enable platform businesses to branch into other economic sectors, equipped with substantial sums of venture capital and ride the delirious wave of technological disruption. Meanwhile, amidst the recovery from previous economic shifts, the Architecture industry is forcibly subjected to further scrutiny from economic turbulence, potentially exacerbating the already marginalised and precarious condition of Architectural labour. In respect to these events, “Architect as Platform Worker” prefaces as a contextualizing diagnosis for examining the position of Architecture work in milieu of the platform economy and capitalism. The thesis is divided into four major parts that examines empirical data, technology trends and business case studies to demystify obfuscations surrounding digital platforms within its technological, political and economic framework. The thesis proposes the conception of an app for architecture work as part of its design component. The app explores the graphical and interactive mechanisms used in existing digital platforms in exploiting visceral values offered by the sharing economy. In addition, the design attempts to utilize these potential values to empower the nomadic architectural worker in the current economic framework. This thesis hopes that through offering innovation and ideas under the fabric of work itself, the profession may progress towards a more sustainable discipline and palliate the draconian pressures that workers face in current practice. In particular, the subsisting silos between Architecture and construction, as well as the disconnection between Architectural practice and education. Both of which collusively exacerbate the austere conditions of contemporary Architectural labour within the regiment of present-day economic framework, such that exploitative practices and overtime labour become increasingly prevalent.