Antifascist Architecture • Andrew Santa Lucia

Antifascist Architecture by Park Books is a 2026 polemic that aims to create a working definition of antifascist architecture. The book is written by Andrew Santa Lucia and Daniel Jonas Roche, with illustrations by Lane Rick. Dialling in from Portland, Oregon in the US, Andrew joins host Timothy Alouani-Roby to discuss why the architecture community should care about the political climate and what they can do in the face of a growing tide of racism and authoritarianism.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Anti-fascist architecture has existed, will exist, and will continue to exist. Which side are you on? That's all I have to say.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Anti-fascist architecture by Park Books is a 2026 polemic that aims to create a working definition of anti-fascist architecture after academia, as the authors argue, has spent decades fetishizing fascist architecture. The book is written by Andrew Santa Lucia and Daniel Jonas Roche, and with illustrations by Lane Rick. And I'm joined from my usual place of broadcast on Gaddy Country in Sydney, Australia, by Andrew, who is dialing in from Portland, Oregon in the US. We discuss why the architecture community should care about the political climate and what they can do in the face of a growing tide of racism and authoritarianism. Please enjoy. So Andrew, welcome. Thanks for joining me. I think this could be our first link up live between North America and Australia. I might just start by asking you simply to introduce yourself and also your colleagues with whom you did the book, if you could just um explain the part in the whole as well, please.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Absolutely. Yeah. So my name is Andrew Santa Lucia, and I am based in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. I'm an associate professor of practice at Portland State University School of Architecture, uh, where I teach classes in um architectural theory and design and history. Um uh my co-writer uh of the of the project is Daniel Jonas Roche, who is based in New York City and is the news editor of the Architects Newspaper. And uh Lane Rick is the illustrator of our book, and she's an architect also based in New York City, teaches at uh University of Pennsylvania, uh, and has uh her own office as well, um, and works predominantly as an architect.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Okay, excellent. Uh, as I was just explaining, offer our focus is usually Australia and the wider Asia Pacific, but I came across your book, uh, which is the primary purpose for us talking today, uh, the book Anti-Fascist Architecture, a recent release. I came across it during Milan Design Week, actually, at Saloni del Mobile. Um, I saw the beautifully designed front cover in the in the bookshop and I picked up a copy, and then we've been in touch since then. So today is primarily a chance to have a chat about that book. I suppose the obvious first question is why now? What what what what are the circumstances which led to you guys working on this book um in the contemporary context today?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yeah, I mean, it's for me the book is is certainly contemporary. Um however, it's felt personally like a wave that has been um sort of building in the background of of my life uh since I was in my early 20s, uh, you know, working and organizing uh in Miami, Florida, where I was born and raised. Um and for the last five years, six years actually, um the movement of the book sort of evolved organically from a installation that I was um uh invited uh to to make for um the Bellevue Art Museum Biennial in Bellevue, Washington, just outside of Seattle. Um I I my practice is one that is not only about writing and theory and theorizing and criticism, which is a big part of my background, but it's also about design and art and buildings. Um and I produced a project called for for this biennial, I produced a project called the Alter to Anti-Fascist Architecture, uh, or Alinar for short. Um and this project started off as uh one of my kind of series of of odd design altar projects that um kind of mixed my interest in sort of like DIY, um spiritual practices, um, and also you know, some form of like social criticism or social critique. Um and as I was working on this project, I realized that um what was missing were the accoutrement of an altar, which are effectively prayer candles and other kind of objects that that that that that sort of help you um you know uh get into that spiritual mood. Um I at the time I um started to get to know Dan really well because we were all sort of um glued to our screens during the pandemic, of course, and having these 24-hour conversations uh happening. Um and I knew Dan had such a deep knowledge of um Soviet, Russian, and also uh former Russian, I mean sorry, Soviet states, uh the architecture and the the the the the sort of understanding of um the building practices and the sociopolitical situations of those places. And I reached out to him and and basically presented a proposition, which was I am interested in us producing a series of 40 prayer candles to anti-fascist architectures. Of course, the first question that came up was, what is anti-fascist architecture? And as we did this project, we of course used the installations as um an opportunity to theorize that question more directly. And we started to realize that it wasn't just these sort of concrete buildings that were produced perhaps by social estates or whatever, but also very deeply tied into like different forms of mutual aid networks that may have been pushed either by like anarchists and or um you know, like Marxist-Leninist groups, etc., to support individual communities. And then we, you know, realize that maybe there's something here. That's the the the first part of it, right? So 2021, uh, 2022. Um at some point in 2023, we decided to to get a little bit more serious and take these these sort of uh discrete candles that had their own histories that were already being written of different projects and dive deeper. And that turned into the realization that we wanted to put together a book that bridged uh political economy, political philosophy, history, uh architectural theory, um, and other kind of like social ideas. And that's that's when we kind of put pen to paper to an extent, um, and reached out to publishers. And we we had something lined up uh with another publisher that then turned into um us, you know, getting an offer from Park uh books to to do the book, and we decided to go with Park. Um, and it could not have been a better choice, um, from the kind of fine design of the book to the in incredible support for anti-fascism from the moment we uh got a phone call uh from them or zoomed with them. Um we we felt like it was the right home for for the work. And so yeah, that was um that was in 2024. Um early that that was in late 2024 when all that that sort of happened, and it took us roughly the entirety of um 2020, 24, 2025, like moving into the the the the the end of this um last school year and the beginning of of this calendar year um to get it all together.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Great. Okay. Um it's interesting that a uh the the basic theoretical question of what anti-fascist architecture actually is came out in in almost like a secondary way from it from an exhibition kind of dynamic. Um so one obvious thing to say about this book as well is that it's it's partisan, it's taking a position, it's not presenting itself as some kind of um depoliticized neutral tract. In fact, that's that's kind of the point, right? Um I think that you use the phrase a call to arms at times. So let me just ask you also quite simply, who is the book for, in your view? Is it for people practicing within the architecture and design world who are somewhat politically engaged, or is it for politically engaged people who are interested in the world of architecture and design, or is it both, or is it someone else?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, I I think the answer is definitely that it's that it's for both. Um, but I would say for different reasons, right? Um I think a lot about, and Dan speaks about this too, and and Lane also speaks about this too in our team, but um I think about our younger selves feeling a little bit a little bit crazy. Um having these deeply held ethical and political beliefs around um how we would love to see the world, you know, continue, like the way that history moves towards a kind of contradiction between some form of power and us, right? Um, and and often turning into something else, right? Kind of Marxist theory of history, right? The scientific theory of history, um like a sense of progress. A hundred percent, right? Um, and us then, of course, being in these architectural spaces and having faculty members tell us, well, listen, I think you should really look at Giuseppe Tarani here. Um, his you know, building the Casa de Fascio is incredible. Now, listen, it was made from Mussolini, but don't worry about that, that doesn't matter, right? Um, and then look at this incredible building, right? Oh, and also Peter Eiseman then writes something about that, and then it just keeps going and then gets deeper and deeper and deeper, right? Um, the idea of depoliticizing architecture wasn't taught to us as a kind of modus operandi of the the the the basis of architectural theory in the 1970s and 80s that would become the one that I would say our probably our generation would inherit, right? Um so part of repoliticizing architecture meant making a decision about whether continuing to focus on fascist architecture, which has just a plethora of platforms still to this day that keep publishing books about it and reward those things, right? We we call it the fascist architecture industrial complex. Um, but we really thought about our younger selves as feeling a bit crazy. And I really hope, and this is something that's been really wonderful as an educator and having so many students be interested in the book and honestly being a part of it in my studios and in my courses, where some of the ideas find their way in there or some of them emerge from it. Um, it's been wonderful to be like to see them number one, not feel crazy, right? Being like, oh, cool, like this is being taught. So that seems normalized, right? I think in the US they would they would call it an indoctrination. Um, but I think for for for us, you know, it's an an incredibly important point of like revisionist history or people's history to borrow from um the American historian Howard Zinn. Um the second reason that I think it's different, right? So that was for the architects. For the non-architects, the reason I think it's different is because architecture is often presented as this very depoliticized um, you know, form of aesthetics and power, right? Like it's very limiting and also um not accessible, right? The discourses that we have in architecture. And I think we we we we kind of go through that in a kind of philosophical sense and try to give some answers as to why. Um, yeah, spoiler alert, um, it's because a lot of the influences were from fascists that weren't necessarily interested in accessibility, they're just in a kind of form of of faux populism that you know um um made a case uh for the sort of continuation of of their ideologies and architecture just you know played uh a um in a way a minor role, right? If we're thinking about like the Nazis, but in in in other in other countries a sort of bigger role. So I think about introducing non-architects to this, um, two things happen that I think are are are fun. One is they think like, holy shit, like what's the drama happening in the world of architecture that these anti-fascists haven't been seriously looked at. Like, who is making these calls, right? And part of it for us is like we know who's making those calls, right? Like that's that's the the the messed up part of all of it, right? It's you know, folks that are able to control the media environment, right? And and folks that are able to sort of reward this almost like nepotistic um uh obsession with fascist architecture. Um, on the other end of the spectrum, what I've been hearing from non-architects, particularly in the in the in the realms of like political science, philosophy, political economy, is that they're they're they're looking at the kind of toil in the middle of the book, which is like thinking through these what makes sense about anti-fascism and architecture, and they're starting to suggest that um that maybe in the book there is like this standard work of anti-fascist aesthetics driving the the the the sort of points. And the reason I think that's important is because when we consider the work, the the ways in which aesthetics have been used by anti-fascists in the past, we think of agit prob, we think of the militant uh stuff, right? Um, I think also there's been a resistance to looking at things like mutual aid as a form or an embodiment of function in architecture or shelter, which are two things that we care so deeply about. So I think that's why it's also going to be appealing and has been appealing to people outside of architecture.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Yeah, and I suppose I'll to pick up a point there about um when we think of other creative fields such as writing, painting, or the other art forms, I feel like everyone would would think of typically anti-fascist figures or you know, artists who represented that kind of stance, but it doesn't seem to be the case in architecture, which I think is perhaps what you're getting at. And the second part of your answer there very much makes me think of this this famous, or at least famous probably within architectural circles, quote from Frederick Jameson, which which I noticed that you guys footnote in the book. I'll just I'll just share it for the audience. Um so it begins quote of all the arts, architecture is the closest constitutively to the economic. There's a longer part to it than that, which talks about um, you know, it's it's an unmediated relationship with land values and property and this kind of thing. I I guess this this this really gets into um one of the biggest questions for me, right? Which is to what extent or what is really specific about architecture in this question of kind of anti-fascist activism? So you've just outlined how we don't seem to really have a canon that's taught of anti-fascist architects or architecture, and then we have this idea of architecture being closer to economic production and the status quo like that. So, what makes what makes the world of architecture so uh important or potentially powerful in your view in relation to this kind of politics?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

To to to continue on the sort of Jameson um thread, it it it it makes me believe deeply that the the historical practice of architecture, not just like the discipline and the way in which it's become a profession, the historical practice of architecture is nimble enough to reinvent itself throughout human history, right? Whether we called it architecture or not, you know. Um, when I think of the Jameson quote and speaking about it in real in relation to um the sort of other creative endeavors, certainly the the kind of speculative real estate relationship that contemporary architecture has had, you know, over the course of uh uh you know of you know after after the industrial revolution and beforehand, of course, with colonization, et cetera, et cetera, right? Um it it it proves that architecture has this let's call it this kind of like imaginative core that could take on a project outside of itself and translate it. Um that's a deep belief on my end of why politicizing an architectural project will most likely result in something that, of course, can translate the thing outside of architecture, right? Um, and so when I think of anti-fascist architecture, I I don't immediately go to like how do we fix a profession? However, we talk about that in the book, and there are so many more important books being written right now and have been written, talking about the labor of architecture, like C.G. Beck's book, right? Um in the States, our problem is um fundamentally one of uh uh a question of labor. Um we do not have much at all union representation um within uh the country, and part of that has to do with legislation that happened almost a hundred years ago. Um, so in many ways, where other industries have sort of these long histories of of labor struggle and asking, right, the um the sort of bosses and owners of architectural companies or other companies in this case um to improve conditions, architecture has had this really odd uh evolution, right? Um, which is not this not the same in many other countries, being, you know, it being normalized like union representation and architecture, sometimes being associated to a state, not being like an independent body. I mean, there's a lot of examples, particularly in the socialist uh realm of kind of historical analysis.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

But it is the core of that something to do with this self-identity as you know, respectable middle class professionals and creatives who are, you know, um tragically suffering creatives who are uh who are you know um working really long hours to bring their beautiful artistic creations to fruition? Is it is it this kind of mentality and self-identity that's led to that?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

I mean, we yeah, I think a little bit. Like we talk about um at the end of the book, we even bring it up, which is like, you know, we're we're sold a lot of identities, you know, um, about what the architect is, whether it's the hustler or the the the sort of creative genius or the soul genius or the the struggling artist or the toiling one, right? Like there's there's these incredible myths um that are that that are often sold to us from a very young age, um, sometimes very deliberately and other times incredibly uncritically, right? Um, that in my opinion basically just prepare us, at least here in this country, just prepare us to like be paid like shit and also not have job security. Um so yeah, I think to an extent, that aspect of the sort of identity play that you're bringing up um is certainly part of the problem. I also suspect in this country in particular and a lot of other quote unquote Western countries, the political education of the architect is a joke and half, right? Our only political education is who's gonna pay for this? Right. And that's we're beholden to that.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Well, I'll pick you up on exactly that point because this thread of depoliticization, right? I think it runs through the whole book. And you're so. I think at a certain point you you link a depoliticized environment with a institutionalized one as well. And I guess that's relates to education. Can you explain why you like what are the roots of that, in your opinion, in in the educational environment? And another sorry big question. So maybe maybe we can tie it a little bit back to that point you you had earlier of this obsession with fascist architecture in terms of studying history. Is there a link between these two areas?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

I think so. Yeah, I I I think so. I so my my okay, I I I say this like my day job, right? I am I'm a professor, right? Like I'm a I teach at a university. I'm the vice president of my union uh in terms of communications and public relations. Um the privatization of public universities in the United States has reached a fever pitch, right? We're standing at a precipice where the the issue of you know the discussion around value, budgets, investments, return on investments are like the main drivers, right? We call that in the book, and we borrow from Mark Fisher, we call those business ontologies, right? So I think in some way the institution, in this case, the education institution that is more um closely being ran like a business, is rife for you know very depoliticized discourse in the background. Now, in the worst case of that, you know, um, you have like literal fascists like pushing these things, right? And in like the least worst case of that, which is still pretty terrible, you have the kind of uncritical pushing of these things. Like, of course, it matters that the person going to architecture school wants to see a return of investment of their um on their degree, but where's the discussion on the neoliberalization of the institution over the last 40 years in this country, right? Where is the um you know the discussion around um the ways in which the labor makeup of our universities has completely shifted over the last 40 years in this country from tenured labor to contingent labor, right? Like this is that's a really big thing. Issues around academic freedom and teaching, et cetera, are all at the core there. So my day job is very interested in that, but it's hard for me to like disconnect those things. I don't see them as separate. It makes it unsurprising when you have, for example, architecture, a practice in the United States that is so deeply tied into speculative investment, be uncritical about like the projects that they they teach you, you know? Um, and so a big part of this book was to not just question the types of projects that they taught you, but also question the odd recuperated language that they teach you as well, that are all part and parcel with that depolitization.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Great. And I'll I'll pick you up on the business ontology part, right? Perhaps you could just um we could try and set out a bit of a uh a definition about what we mean by that, and also just use that as a way to lead into the the section of the book where you set out the kind of main pillars that you're against, I suppose, in in in either education or in what we could call common sense in terms of architectural theory. So um not limited to, but you I think you talk in the book about um Heidegger and a phenomenological kind of strain. You talk about Foucault uh and then the business ontology and then labor issues. Obviously, we could talk all day about all of those individually, but could you give a bit of an overview, perhaps starting with the business ontology point, a bit of an overview of these big strands of theory and common sense that you're trying to set something out against?

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Yeah, so for for me, the business ontology criticism is I I think it's important and I think it's simple. Um when we are taught uh uh several sort of recuperated concepts, um, and are not taught to critique those concepts. Like my favorite one is affordable housing, um sustainability is another one, right? Um when we don't critique what those things are, like what their their sort of um main goal is, um we risk just accepting the ontolog like the ontological playing field of capitalism that defines how our imagination operates. So a simple way to describe a business ontology is um one that's fundamentally against the concept of, for example, of like labor rights. One that's a little bit more interested, for example, around the proliferation of profit motives and um other things that are tied into like quote unquote the health of a business, right? Um so when we say um business ontologies, we're often criticizing these very typical kind of capitalistic pro-business sentiments that become the foundation of our language.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yeah, they become like the common sense, like the air. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

That's the you know, the Mark Fisher point that the the issue, you know, is the is the fact that capitalist realism is omnipresent, right? That it it it it seems as if there are no other alternatives. And and and part of it is because even our language, right, and the way in which we engage with each other is dictated by this. Like, for example, social media, of course, being a space that's supposed to be for connection, but effectively is a marketplace. That's a sort of scaled-up version of a business ontology, right? Um in terms of uh, you know, uh Heidegger and Foucault, um you know, as someone who is an architectural theorist and cares deeply about the practice of philosophy, the discipline and its history, um, I think it's impossible to not deal with some of the what I've referred to as defaults in the book, right? Um or that we refer to as defaults in the book. Phenomenology in and of itself, I don't think is the issue as much as uh Heideggeran uh concepts and strands that architects use as a kind of default evidence that architecture is conceptual, right? So the the the the main core here in the essays is not just the fact that Heidegger was an avowed Nazi, right? We know this, you know, or not the fact that he was entirely um, you know, saved and in a way recuperated by Hannah Arendt. That's not up for debate. That is true, right? Like we know why we're still talking about Heidegger, right? Um what's more insidious for me is when someone accepts, for example, the notion of like rootedness, or some of these other concepts like in building, dwelling, and thinking, uh, that are absolutely emerging from Heidegger's anti-Semitism and Heidegger's disdain for the other. The other thing that really worries me in the kind of Heideggeran tradition, and one that morphed into other critical architectural traditions is this idea that when you think you are outside of the world, right? And why do you do that? You do that because it's good for the world. So the world doesn't know what's good for it. I do, right? Classic Heideggerian issue, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:12

I know it's a it's a classic example of like it it naturally depoliticizes because it dehistoricizes.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Who does that serve, right? It's an unfortunate part of it. The last point that I'll say about Heidegger, right? So I just I brought up building dwelling thinking a little bit, but um, there are juggernauts that I am standing on the shoulders of here that took much more risk in cutting down Heidegger's um the industrial complex of Heidegger, people like Fadias, who wrote a book called Heidegger Nazism in the late 80s, who was a student of Heidegger and decided to be like, guys, I think we need to really rethink this whole Heidegger thing, guys, because there are these notebooks that are going to be published at some point that they tie the entirety of the philosophy back to the anti-Semitism and the incredible like anti-humanism at its core, right? Um, and in in an essay in particular called The Question Concerning Technology, that was written in the 30s but then was published in the 50s. This essay, when they published it in the 50s, was completely depoliticized and removed all mentions of anti-Semitism. And it became the basis of a lot of what I, you know, I think um other Heidegger's and then what would be turned into like object-oriented ontologies um would become obsessed with, which is the concept of the tool, which I think for architects is a is is is a is is a kind of almost a priori problem, even though it's obviously an apostori one. Um and so in questions concerning technology, Heidegger basically was just like the issue with technology is that Jews controlled it. Like that's just that's it. You know, there's nothing, there's nothing more. That's not philosophy, right? That's just anti-Semitic propaganda, right? And so it's not hard for for us to say those things and have those stances. I think it's a very rational thing to have those stances. What's hard is questioning what are the defaults. We try to identify what some of those defaults are in architecture, and one of them has to do with this idea of removing architecture from the world, autonomy, right? Um, that gets picked up by other architects later on, and like um, you know, they use it as as a sort of um way to establish architecture's agency outside of just its kind of professionalism. And so that becomes a very intellectual project. The project of critical architecture, K. Michael Hayes, all the stuff that sort of emerges from that. Um, and I'm not saying, you know, like they're they're they have their own issues, and we deal with that as well in the book, but um, I think autonomy um is in incredibly indebted to Heidegger's concept of thinking and being, right? This idea that you can be outside of the world, right? Um, with regards to Foucault, um again, so many other juggernauts have done the hard work and their disciplines to deal with Foucault's neoliberal turn at the end of his life. Um, for us, there's two things that are worrisome, right? One is why do we need to keep reading about the Panopticon if we're not if we're serious about not building prisons, right? So to an extent, that is a Foucauldian concept, the idea of um, you know, being critical of your own self and trying to find all the ways in which you're yourself a fascist, right? Or the ways in which you yourself are jailing yourself, right, from the panoptic playbook. Um, on the other end of the of that spectrum, you have heterotopianism, right? Which is in and of itself a critique of utopianism as you know, certain kind of like Marxist theorists were considering it, and also the ways in which certain modern architects were considering it. And yeah, I think with with those two concepts of heterotopianism and the panopticon, the question is simple. Why are architects so obsessed? And so part of my my job and our job in the in this book was to trace just you know some of the contemporary issues that arise with that, um, particularly heterotopianism, being interested in a kind of publicity that is actually private, um, you know, heterotopianism being um really indebted to this concept of like having programs that are um uh antithetical to each other, right? And we easily describe Koolhas's project for the Kopfell prison project um that never got built, but this idea of making the prison into a mall, you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Um, I mean these are the idea of like a humane prison. It's uh like I suppose the core of that is is is if I to describe it as it's like some kind of conceptual dissonance which allows you to or allows practitioners to pass off something like a prison or something like an environmentally damaging project as having redeeming qualities. And it's also fundamentally individualist rather than collectivist in its understanding as well.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

I absolutely, I absolutely think that's that's key there. And like, you know, my it's a personal note on my end. Like I am I am the child of an incarcer I've I was a child of an incarcerated person for 17 years of my life. And so I visited prisons very normally, you know, that was kind of like the way I remembered my father. Um and it's an aspect of like my life going into architecture school and then you know, speaking about panopticism as this wow, look at how much power we have. And I'm thinking to myself, that's not the power we should be having, right? We should maybe not think of this as a good thing and maybe be more critical of it, you know. Um, which is a big part of, again, my my own my own activism in the past and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Yeah, great. Okay. So before I I will come back at the end uh to thinking about the perspective of architects in practice. But as we've been chatting, one of the images in my mind is of a student who's relatively new to the world of architecture. You described earlier that process of feeling frustrated by you know having certain ethical political commitments and not seeing them voiced or surfaced in an architectural education. The image in my mind is uh is a student who's maybe new at university today, they love architecture and design. They're living in, well, we're all living in fairly um tumultuous times, and they're probably feeling moved and politically engaged, not seeing that reflected in their architectural education. So my question is: what kind of advice or at least thoughts would you like to share with that student who hasn't found their way through yet? They're not out here calling themselves an avowed anti-fascist or communist or anarchist or whatever, but they want to be engaged. They they're feeling some of the things that you're talking about in terms of why are we looking critically at fascist architecture from the past. Would you advise them to go out of the field and engage in politics for a while before coming back? Or would you would you want to see the main um fight to change that system from within?

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I, I do, I don't think that what you're saying is a is a false dichotomy. It's being presented as one a little bit. I I think there are more options, but ultimately, I don't think you'd change like reform is is impossible. However, I do think crisis informs the kind of material reality of our practice. And so my suggestions to my own students, right, are number one, to be as politically educated as you as you possibly can be. Now, I don't say it in a liberal sense, like, hey, go take a you know uh a class on all politics in history, right? No. Um I think that that occurs in probably formal and informal ways. And so oftentimes I'll be like, what is uh the thing driving your interest in like particular issues around social justice? And I encourage them, you know, to to follow those threads into solidarity with work that's already being done, right? I don't immediately suggest you know, intellectualize the problem, right? I think one of the beautiful parts about a political education, and specifically one that has liberation at its core, um is that there it almost demands a form of praxis, right? So like action and theory, right, together. And that's a kind of old school concept, but one that I think architects at different points in the last 50 years have been really obsessed with and then stopped being really obsessed with. We're sold pessimism, right? Um, and that kind of, you know, uh, like that neoliberal pessimism, that kind of um uh uh, you know, that that pessimism at its core that says, well, you're probably not gonna change anything, so why bother? Um it forces people into these really lonely places. And um architecture school can be potentially very like full of solidarity with people experiencing a lot of different things, especially at places like the public universities that I teach at. You know, we have students that materialities are such that they are houseless, right? That they I have a whole cadre of students that go together to the food pantry every week together, right? To to to sort of, you know, make sure that they're that they're fed, right? And that's something that our university, you know, it there's plenty of problems at our university, but it's something that is uh a reality of of their of of of our student body as a public institution. I don't see architecture um school as separate from those kind of material realities. And yeah, of course, there are going to be um students that come from more affluent backgrounds, etc. There are many ways in which solidarity can be built, but I don't think it's uh it occurs entirely without a kind of concurrent political education around some form of immediate like mutual aid, right? I think that's the big the big piece because as a student myself, I felt that loneliness, right? That this kind of like, okay, I'm I'm starting to be interested in philosophy, I'm starting to be interested in political philosophy, etc. And now what do I do? Right. My architecture professors are like, all right, cool, you might just got to get your work done, okay? I'm like, all right, I'm very interested in like bringing some of these social ideas in, you know. Um, and it wasn't until my kind of political awakening that happened, you know, in community with people that weren't architects, that people that weren't even in university at the time, um, that were organizing on the streets or organizing workplaces to unionize places. They were working on international solidarity campaigns, protests, etc. Those are the things that guided me in architecture more than I could have ever imagined back then. So, some of the advice is to make sure that you're within the communities in which that you want to practice in. We talk about that in our chapter on anarchist architectural action items, where like simple thought exercise, but what does it look like where the office is not the office building, right? What looks what does it look like when your office is, you know, within the the sort of community spaces that you are doing this work? Other architects have theorized the problem of the kitchen table, for example, right? And like what that does to an architectural project relationally, more so than like materially. So um, yeah, I I feel like I digressed a little bit, but those are the thoughts that come up for me.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yeah, no, great. And and well, to to uh to stay on the point about praxis, right? I realize that we've talked quite a lot here about theory, but we should really also outline for listeners that a good part of this book is about real-world practical um bricks and mortar or you know, real people examples, right? I wonder if you give me a a bit of an outline of the actual uh how you how you talk about architects and architecture examples themselves. And feel free to throw up any particular examples as well.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Oh, oh hell yeah. I mean, this is the funnest part, I think, of the book. Um, the center of the book is is basically it's uh hundreds of pages at that point uh of um histories of people and histories of projects. Um when we were working on anti-fascist architecture, there was the the the kind of disciplinary um the discipline like the I'm trying to think of a good way to say this. Um the kind of knee-jerk reaction to a kind of disciplinary approach is to say, well, it's about the buildings, isn't it? Or it's about the drawings. Um and we realized very quickly that sometimes an anti-fascist architect may not produce a work of building, but be very influential sometimes in the world of teaching or in some other mutual aid endeavor, right? I think about people like Kyoshi Koramaya, um, the famous Japanese American architect, basically, you know, uh uh not born into but like grew up in an internment camp um from the the west coast of the united states and had this uh kind of like storied uh history um uh living in philadelphia studying at Penn uh working closely with Buckminster Fuller um but also at points living in the Bay Area working closely with the Black Panthers but also living in the East Coast and you know being anti-war uh working on anti-war anti-Vietnam war um activism that's centered on like the idea of well we're gonna get enough people and we're gonna move the Pentagon five inches and so for me that's in a way like an action of anti-fascist architecture in the sense of like we've identified a material reality like the Pentagon right and the idea of like having some sort of action that is fantastical it's obviously performative not in a negative sense but performative in like the Berthold Brecht sense right um and then and the point is that like it relates to the built environment as well right no question professionalized understanding of architecture and Kiyoshi in and of himself is a very well-known figure in architecture but very marginal for his activism you know um so people sometimes didn't produce a building and we thought and it was very important to make sure that we referenced these incredible activists and revolutionaries that came out of architecture right like the idea that these folks are coming out of architecture maybe points to like there's something quite potentially radical in the educational architect if and only if right you squint in a certain way and see it right you know so that was one thought with the buildings and with the projects we looked at a kind of myriad of ones right um I think it's it's hard to pick one to talk about here in this case I don't know if there's one that you'd love to talk about I'm happy to talk about like that comes up for you.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

Look I I I enjoyed reading about the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna um and I also happen to my particular love for North Africa means that I love all the some of the points about Algeria as well.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

All right so maybe let's talk a little bit about Bushama you know like even though he's a person like so like this is the this is the interesting part where in the people's uh area many of the people that we covered are not just like revolutionaries they're like militants they were architects that were writing architectural theory in prison like Bushama right and like the idea that like Bushama obviously practiced an architect but would have a much more important effect on the architectural education of the country that that means a lot that means a lot to our own histories because then we could ask ourselves who had the outsize effects on the architectural history of my country well let's talk about one here in the United States that's Peter Eisenman. And what was Peter Eisenman obsessed with though I don't know Giuseppe Terrani the Reich you know the the the the the Reich uh uh chancellery right like these are our this is who's shaping it right and so for us Bushama is this wonderful counterpoint right to that in a material sense but also an educational pedagogical sense on the building end of the spectrum we bring up Karl Marxov right and like what's there not to love right about these uh housing estates that were built to not just house workers and people but to create new forms of kind of community um communities centered around power and labor and organizing um I think what we're interested in with that building and other buildings that we've looked into wasn't just like their intent but also how they were used. I mean that became a bunker an anti-fascist bunker like a like a you know uh not a castle but certainly something that was defensible you know in the midst of of war um and so there's a very material point to that that we think is not just like a cool conceptual thing of like can your buildings have other programs like can your house turn into a a bunker can your house you know turn into a series of parapets where you could like shoot people from you know like those are militant questions that are often asked in the moment when necessary and we have the ability to ask them in retrospect and to say there's something there about architectural theory that's not being talked about.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Well it's it's a it's a strand of thinking that clearly goes back to say you know the Paris Commune and the idea of barricades in the streets and whatnot. Let me just ask you it kind of connects to that history and also the point about Buchanan and um uh when you when you ask the simple question for someone practicing in a country of well who are the people who've set the terms the common sense the history of of architectural theory in that environment and I think about how there might be a gap in places like I suspect in the US uh Australia probably the same Western Europe probably the same um where well let me share this observation with you that I often talk to people about more off the record where a lot of the small conversations that I have with architects and people around the industry and the wider community on the surface of it have all of these um almost kind of like an anti-capitalist character. They talk about the frustration that their creativity is is hamstrung and controlled by developer money. They talk about how they want to do things for the public good but actually their creativity has to get funneled into um private private luxury things um how they care more about yeah public city life rather than private dwellings but that's what they have to do for a living and so on and so on and so on. So with that kind of like criticism that's in the milieu is in the air all the time is in the common sense does that relate to this idea that there's like there's like a gap in history there because what I'm imagining is if these people who have these sentiments could connect it in their own history to the types of individuals that you're describing maybe we wouldn't feel so lost and that energy wouldn't get lost and in that kind of nihilism and frustration that you describe as well.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

I love that point I think a lot about it um here in the US and I assume it's in Europe as well there is an insidious form of capture that like very liberal institutions um do where they offer the kind of defang depoliticized version of the thing that you want to work on right and so I immediately think that you know best case scenario right you have students that are graduating and they're like I'm so invested in affordable housing right and then I I I immediately know that you know you you're gonna have a uh a a really interesting time um realizing that uh this form of affordable housing that's happening in market rate practice you know it's just a way to tame the the discourse around housing for all right um these uh captures that happen uh are not that for me they're not just insidious but they're they're quite alluring because they tell you you know what we can't change anything now let's let's get good at this and then we'll change it later but what's happening ultimately is that you are getting good at this so that is all that you will be able to do right you've effectively you know you m you you made a wager right in that sense um and I understand that wager from a perspective of like survival I understand that you know we are forced to sell our labor to people um and this is why I think the political part of it is so necessary like you bring up common sense you know yeah and for me like my final chapter is the common sense evolution of these ideas in which we will live in a form of a communist mutualism or not and it the or not is is is like the scary part how could I be unreasonable or unrational in wanting a non-nihilistic you know vision um of of a future um but I do think that the conversations around those common sense things could be a great first step in connecting um and and as as someone who like I I do this for a living right like I I connect with students and talk to them around these kind of concepts and then let them know here's the insidious format and here is the format in which you know like the the thing that was recuperated for that format to exist. So when we speak of affordable housing we always you know give the kind of dialectical opposition to it which is housing for all and we explain the difference.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

Yeah it's interesting it's uh well I I'm on the call to you today from Sydney which I think is by certain measures the second or or the most expensive housing in in the whole world um and what what gets call housing affordability here in in in projects is often it's a certain percentage that's paid to a certain market rate. So in effect it's not affordable for many people but I'm not sure if that's exactly the same. But look that's that's actually probably a whole other topic for another day. I'll finish with a final question actually which is which is a bit of a dual question. We talked earlier about the people um outside of the profession who are interested in architecture let me finish the other way around um with an eye on our uh usual audience right so people who are practicing within architecture and design I suspect of our listeners here there's a cohort who are the ones I just described who are thinking oh yeah this a lot of this kind of makes sense to me I've I've not really put it in these ex exactly political terms but I I feel all of this is really interesting. That's one side and then the other side is people who might just be feeling a bit bemused by all of this and it's and it's um like what what are these guys talking about? What what what the hell's this got to do with the practice that I'm doing each week at my corporate architecture practice. I wonder if you could conclude with a thought for each of those parties so that so perhaps I could summarize that as um talking to the converted or at least the interested and and what's the message to the people who maybe hear this and aren't quite clear of the relevance of it I think I'm gonna say the same thing to both of them um anti-fascist architecture has existed will exist and will continue to exist which side are you on that's all I have to say great well a perfect way to finish thank you so much for joining me Andrew thank you by extension to your colleagues and um yeah appreciate you taking the time today.

SPEAKER_00 55:53

Yeah I appreciate it Tim I hope you have a good rest of your your your morning uh tomorrow for me.

SPEAKER_01 55:58

So yeah yeah thank you for listening to this episode of Stories in Design please subscribe and review and you can find out all about what we do at indesignlive.com