Studio Life: mechanisms of competition and collaboration in architectural labour processes

The aim of the current study is to explore creative labour production and reproduction processes in architectural design studios in Brazil, UK, Belgium and Italy. In contrast to free autonomy narratives, participant observation has evidenced three conflicting mechanisms in creative labour processes, namely: subjectification, distinction and hierarchical expropriation. This issue is pivotal in a transition period-of-time when architecture confronts the myths of geniuses and focuses on knowledge exchange paradigms. Architecture was not herein approached as substance nor as form (an immutable essence and ideal), rather, it was explored as processes engaged with discipline and dialectics. Discipline was investigated based on the Grounded Theory used to code conflicts and recurrences by focusing on how it reinforces subjectivities and practices. In addition, Action Research was used to explore architecture’s social dialectics by focusing on collaborative methodologies and on how architecture (re)produces ways of seeing by revealing (visualizing hidden properties), imagining (conceiving future scenarios) and refunding (articulating virtual seeds for shared social realities). Results have indicated proposals to result from collaborative work, subjectivities to be enclosed in hegemonic narratives, fantasies to hide the actual collective process of production, and allegedly individual creations to be forms of fetish. This finding suggests a paradigm transition still in course, with overlapping conflicts between invention and labour, competition and collaboration, distinction and collective dialogue, as well as seductive narratives and negotiated practices.