Future Perfect

It’s still early days for unionization in architecture, but organizers with the Architecture Lobby’s Green New Deal Working Group and Science for the People are thinking ahead. Meeting at the People’s Forum under the banner of the “Alternative Building Industry (ABI) Collective,” members reflected on the recent March Against Fossil Fuels and the role of organized labor in winning a just transition. Brian Kamanzi, a researcher with CUNY’s Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) network, relayed conversations among unions in Africa, Europe, and South America working to safeguard their jobs by building public sector renewable energy. Joshua Barnett, a longtime NYCHA architect and public employees’ union member, stressed the need for architectural workers to organize similarly around their role in delivering public solutions to the climate crisis. The group grappled with the work it will take to implement a Green New Deal for New York—not just retrofitting buildings and protecting against sea level rise, but building an organized design industry capable of advocating an…