Early in December, with relatively little fanfare, the Architecture Lobby, an organization devoted to advancing the rights of workers within the architecture industry, formally launched the #MeToo Solidarity Bloc, which the Lobby website describes as “an informal, non-institutional group meant for community support and discussion.” (Full disclosure: I pay membership dues to the Lobby, but haven’t participated in any organizing work with them for the past six months.) The basic premise is that individuals and firm sign up, publicly offering their resources (job opportunities, networking, referrals, moral support, etc.) to architectural workers who have been affected by sexual harassment and/or speaking up about it. So far, 21 firms and individuals—including writer Mimi Zeiger, Stella Lee, AIA, and the firms Pliskin Architecture and See arch.—have joined.
The bloc has its roots in a loose whisper network that the Lobby organized earlier in 2018—a response, in some ways, to the Shitty Architecture Men list that swept through the architecture industry. Survivors of harassment and other workplace abuses often worried that they wouldn’t be taken seriously or their concerns would be dismissed; the network turned whispers into an actual conversation and helped to create a sense of solidarity and community among survivors that hadn’t existed before. At the same time, a feeling of solidarity and connectedness can’t guarantee a survivor who files a formal complaint a new job. They may feel powerless in the face of large and established firms, which have the resources to pay for any potential legal settlements (and can hire lawyers who can bully employees into signing non-disclosure agreements).
The list arrived during a time of general reckoning in the profession, as at least one long-held secret became public: In March, Richard Meier, FAIA, one of the titans of the profession, was accused by five women of sexual harassment and/or assault. After taking a seven-month leave of absence, Meier stepped away from his firm in October. While the solidarity bloc isn’t a direct response to the Meier allegations, or to the list, it’s the latest step forward in architecture’s long-awaited, and extraordinarily slowly-moving, #MeToo movement. “We first got the idea after we’d written the Lobby’s statement against what had come out against Richard Meier,” says A.L. Hu, communications coordinator for the Lobby, architectural designer at Solomonoff Architecture Studios, and one of the founders of the bloc. Hu recalls reading Stella Lee’s op-ed, titled “Why Doesn’t Architecture Care About Sexual Harassment?”, published in The New York Times in October, and realizing that, actually, nothing structural had changed in the wake of the Meier revelations. “We have this network, but we’re not doing anything with the network,” Hu says. “We figured out that we should just go public with it.”
The Solidarity Bloc is meant to be a counterpoint to the back-channeled revelations that are still coming; it offers a real way forward instead of simply confirming how various abuses of power have underpinned our industry for so long. And the relative sense of business as usual (never mind the continuing whispers) shows that there’s still a long way to go to fight harassment and abuses of power. “The community is still in denial, or there’d be a lot more sweeping changes,” Hu says. The recent Center for Architecture Dean’s Roundtable in New York City, a gathering of academic deans across the United States, showed how far we still have to go to achieve parity. As Nicolas Kemper reported for Common Edge, Dean Ila Berman of the University of Virginia introduced the issue of harassment, while noting that only 20 percent of deans are female. And so, the emergence of the solidarity network can have a twofold effect: not only providing solace and comfort (and in some cases practical advice or networking opportunities) to those who need it, but also through its very existence reminding the architecture community that we have a bloc because, uh, we need one.
Dana Floyd, a designer at Hood Design in Oakland, added her name to the bloc. It was an intensely personal decision, one informed by her own experience earlier in her career. “As a person who experienced workplace sexual harassment, I wanted to know that someone could help me find a new job so I didn’t feel beholden,” she says. Floyd didn’t find the support that she needed when going through her own process, but knowing what she wanted made it easy to see the benefits the bloc could offer. “I had support when I talked to people about what happened, but I didn’t feel that anyone was willing to take the next step … to help me find a new job.” She can’t necessarily give anyone who wants one a job at her current firm, but she’s there to make referrals and advocate on multiple fronts.
Not everyone who’s signing up has a personal story; some designers just believe it’s the right thing to do. “I do think that injustice gets solved by the groups in power stepping up to realize that there is an imbalance,” Barak Pliskin, AIA, says. Even though I’ve cold-called him, he’s ready to talk about why he listed his firm, Pliskin Architecture. “I’ve had the privilege of having a Y chromosome—but that doesn’t mean I can ignore everything else that happens if you don’t have it,” he says. He first heard about the Solidarity Bloc after following the Lobby on Twitter and reading their statement after the Meier story broke. Before Meier, “there were undertones that were clear and present,” he says, “but I don’t think anyone was doing the digging or connecting the dots, myself included.” And while his seven-person firm based in New York City isn’t in a position to offer a job to anyone who calls, he wants people to know that he’s there for referrals, support, and guidance. “The most we can offer is an open door policy, and the idea of speaking freely without fear of retribution.”
So far, no large corporate firms, arguably the ones that could more easily absorb new hires, are members of the bloc. I contacted Kimberly Beals, Gensler’s Midwest public relations rep, and asked her if the firm was aware of the Solidarity Bloc, which I described as “an invitation to firms to basically indicate to individuals that, if they experience consequences for speaking up about sexual harassment, they will try to find them jobs/offer moral support/etc.” She responded that there wasn’t enough time before my deadline to respond.
I also emailed Richard Meier’s office for comment. Tami Hausman, owner of the public relations firm Hausman LLC, who was recently engaged by Richard Meier & Partners, called me within a few hours. I asked whether the firm had heard of the Solidarity Bloc and were perhaps interested in participating. Somewhere in my conversation I used the phrase “opportunity to make amends.”
Through Hausman, I received an emailed statement from Bernhard Karpf, a managing principal, soon after: “We firmly support all efforts to eliminate harassment and abuse in the profession. Richard Meier & Partners continues to foster a collaborative workplace where the culture strongly supports women and minorities, and nurtures new ideas and creativity. This diverse and open environment is key to the firm's success. We have a strict code of conduct and do not tolerate violations of any kind."
I followed up by asking Hausman via email: Is the firm aware of the Solidarity Bloc created by the Architecture Lobby? Would the firm have any interest in participating in the Solidarity Bloc? Why or why not? “
But I received no further answers.
