Much has been debated over the last half-century regarding the work of the architect—profession or trade?, creation or collaboration?, autonomous discipline or a cog in a socio-political system?—yet almost nothing has been written about the architect as a worker. One of the initial problems is that architects have always struggled to recognize themselves as just another type of worker. Architects have preferred to view architecture as a vocation—something done for pleasure, like a hobby or a passion—surrounding this attitude with various myths. In recent attempts to describe the state of the profession, the word "crisis" seems to permeate everything, rarely accompanied by broader reflections.
