The Architecture Lobby Cooperative Network researches and advocates for worker-ownership structures in architectural practice to increase equity, diversity, and resilience within the profession.
The case for cooperatives.
Cooperatives provide a more equitable structure for architectural practice: an alternative to the precarity of a boom-bust cycle, and exploitation of a race-to-the-bottom market. The ‘one worker, one share, one vote’ structure makes a worker cooperative a democratic workplace.
Starting small.
In the United States, 76% of architecture firms are 1 to 9 people, yet they capture only 14% of total billings.
Small firms are struggling to compete in a market that favors large firms. They are often unable to afford the specialized staff that tackle the vital administrative, managerial, financial, legal, development, and marketing tasks that support architectural work.
Yet small firms have their own distinct advantages: on-the-ground knowledge and working relationships with communities, the ability to experiment and innovate, a focus on design and detail, work-life balance… Working together can help small firms build collective power and resilence.
A cooperative network builds collective agency.
Forming a cooperative network allows small firms to share critical support infrastructure, while expanding their collective professional, economic and political capabilities.
The network provides members with the essential tools to run a practice. Within the network, firms share resources: leveraging the economies of scale to jointly hire consultants, exchange knowledge and workers, share space, software, equipment…
Through strategic partnerships with other types of cooperatives, community organizations and activists, the network connects firms with potential project partners, while helping to build a broader cooperative economy rooted in collective power.
