WBYA? (Who Builds Your Architecture?) is an advocacy group that asks architects and allied fields to better understand how the production of buildings connects their design and consulting practices to the workers who ultimately build them. Through workshops, exhibitions and publications, the group has brought attention to the underlying unequal systems that structure today’s architecture and construction. I will discuss WBYA?’s work and the group’s working methodologies: from resourcing human rights organisations’ reports on labor exploitation at transnational architectural project sites to producing drawings that connect architects to migrant construction workers in a direct line to organising workshops where interdisciplinary participants debate charters for a new code of ethics for the built environment.
Kadambari Baxi is an architect and educator based in New York. Her current work focuses on climate, activism and novel forms of architectural agency. She works collaboratively, forming teams or initiating partnerships on a project basis. Most recently, she produced Climate Actions 2.0 as paired short-films, for an installation at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture; she and her interdisciplinary team of designers, filmmakers, and scientists, created the multimedia exhibition Air Drifts on transboundary air pollution, exhibited at the Oslo Architectural Triennale; and she cofounded an advocacy group WBYA? (Who Builds Your Architecture?), and the group’s work was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Boston Art College and Istanbul Design Biennial. She is a professor of practice in architecture at Barnard College of Columbia University.
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