The Future of Architecture: Shifting Towards Social and Ecological Justice with FAF’s Charlie Edmonds

Our guest, Charlie Edmonds, Co-Founder of Future Architects Front, calls for collective action to address exploitative practices and envisions a world where architecture prioritizes social needs over capital interests.

Charlie is the co-founder of Future Architects Front (FAF), a grassroots organization working to address issues like unpaid overtime, low fees, and poor construction quality in the architecture industry.

Charlie discusses how he and co-founder Priti became frustrated with the exploitative conditions in architecture and started FAF to advocate for wider political and economic shifts to prioritize social and ecological needs over capital interests.

He shares how FAF takes a systems view to trace architecture's problems back to neoliberal policies, and says the Covid pandemic helped reveal many of these flawed structures. Charlie believes organizing labor collectively is key to creating change, and worker unions have historically been powerful forces in achieving better conditions.

Highlights:

• The architecture industry has endemic issues like unpaid overtime, low fees, and poor construction quality.
• These problems can be traced back to neoliberal policies that prioritized profits over social needs.
• The pandemic exposed many flaws in work practices and productivity beliefs.
• Collective labor organizing through unions is a powerful way to create societal change.
• Architectural skills like visualization can be useful tools for political and social justice campaigns.
• Solidarity is a crucial concept in driving collective action and working towards a more equitable and sustainable future.

Further Reading/Info:

• Future Architects Front (FAF)
• Death to the Calling by Marisa Cortwright 
• All Design Is Political, Not All Politics Is Design by Leijia Hanrahan
• The Funambulist Magazine
• The Architecture Lobby
• Architectural Workers United

Guest Bio:

Charlie is a London-based designer and writer working across the fields of architecture, climate transition, and political economy. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge where he co-founded Future Architects Front with Priti Mohandas. Charlie is a systems designer at CIVIC SQUARE in Birmingham where he works to demonstrate the necessity for a devolved urban climate transition.Through FAF and CIVIC SQUARE, Charlie’s work seeks to establish emergent forms of anti-capitalist organising situated within the (re)production of the built environment.