Martin C. Pedersen: The Latest Architecture and News

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Architecture firms don’t usually make labor history, but it happened earlier this month when employees at Bernheimer Architecture agreed to form a union. It is a first for the industry and comes six months after an unsuccessful attempt to unionize at SHoP. The initiative was done through the auspices of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in collaboration with Architectural Workers United (AWU), a grass-roots organizing group. Whether this leads to other successful efforts remains to be seen, but it is clearly a step forward for labor in the architecture sector. According to Curbed, AWU is “currently in talks with up to ten other firms across New York.”

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In an age of ebooks and web-first publishing, Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing (Lars Müller Publishers) is a defiant throwback: a lavish, 500-plus-page book, very much an object befitting its subject, whose buildings had a weight, both literal and figurative, that was part of their power and appeal. Conceived and edited by Michael Merrill, the book is both a deep examination of Kahn’s creative process, as told through the medium of the hand drawing, as well as a revealing portrait of the man behind those buildings and illustrations. Merrill is an architect and educator and currently serves as director of research at the Institute for Building Typology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. He’s also the author of two previous books on the master architect, Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out and Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Martin C. Pedersen talks with Ron Rochon, managing partner at Miller Hull, about Carbon and the role of architectural firms in eliminating emissions. Discussing the EMissions Zero initiative, the current shortcomings of carbon offsets, and the way forward, the piece also questions the possibility of setting goals with the absence of an internationally, agreed-upon carbon cap.