ABSTRACT
The breadth of the 'broader definition' of architecture connects to the boundaries of the professional associations and professionalism in general. One can no longer think of themselves as an elite, autonomous profession divorced from issues of financing, infrastructure and the procurement process. Different from a national professional organisation in that they represent employees as opposed to firm owners, unions would not only represent the majority of those workers engaged in architectural design in a way that is currently absent but also put pressure on the existing institutions to address the reality of on-the-ground architectural production. Unions are also the most direct way to ensure that the most egregious forms of labour abuse that plague the profession — unpaid internships, scabbing, uncontrolled hours — are eradicated. This could also imply, more radically, de-professionalisation — not in its negative connotation of deskilling but in the affirmative sense of shedding both the identity and the apparatus of a failed enterprise.
