ABSTRACT

This chapter argues for cooperativizing small architectural firms with the aim of sharing expertise, resources, workers, and possibly income to make small firms more powerful and more socially impactful. The history of cooperatives as a special business category is examined as is their real or potential impact on architecture. If unionization is a model for collective bargaining and professional impact for large firms, cooperativization is the model for small firms to do the same. The argument also extends from the practicality of socializing small firms to the larger mission of thwarting capitalist-imposed regimes of competition and a developer-driven built environment.