Peggy Deamer will speak Wednesday, October 10, 2018, 7:00 pm at the MATCH, 3400 Main Street. Admission is free and open to the public. Ernesto Alfaro is a Senior Associate at SLA Studio Land where he works in planning and landscape. He is also a Lecturer at Rice Architecture.
Kaiwaka house in New Zealand. Courtesy Peggy Deamer.
On October 10, the Rice Design Alliance and Rice Architecture welcome architect and Yale professor emerita of architecture, Peggy Deamer, PhD. Part of the PLAT and RDA Lecture series: Sharing, Dr. Deamer’s talk, “Lobbying for Architecture,” will be of keen interest to those of us in the design profession desperate for some critical self-reflection. The founder of the architectural advocacy group, The Architecture Lobby, Dr. Deamer challenges deep-seeded notions about the architect as worker, of design as (actual) work, of the nature of design work itself, and the role of the architect in the production of architecture and culture. For Dr. Deamer and her fellow Lobbyists, the profession of architecture itself is in a state of crisis. In a time of fierce competition for projects, decreasing fees and scope, and deplorable work-life balance, design is repeatedly held up (by architects, themselves) as a kind of art beyond the constraints of capitalism, even while its end results (buildings) are held hostage to increasingly tighter construction budgets and schedules. Viewed in this light, the architecture profession must evolve and improve the lives of its constituent workers. For her, if the value of architectural labor cannot be rectified and balanced, how can architects (and architectural designers, interns, etc.) be expected to envision and design a free and equitable future?
Despite what may appear to be an ominous tone in this line of thought, Dr. Deamer’s work is inherently optimistic. She has spent her entire professional life in the dual role of practitioner and teacher. Though her own design will not be the core of her talk, her recent New Zealand retreat uses an efficient plan and simple materials with incredible beauty. Her interest in the fair treatment of architects is necessarily tied to her role as steward of young designers, who graduate every year and embark upon a career that remains one of the most challenging and ill-recompensed of all the professions. Does it not make sense to wonder why this is, and to wonder further, what we can do to fix this?
