From Artist-Architect to Salaried Architect: The Examination of Professional Practice in West Berlin, 1967-1977

This chapter provides new insights into the debates around professional practice and architectural education in the context of the student movement in West Berlin between 1967 and 1977, and the subsequent attempts at architectural workers’ organisation in unions. The protagonists developed the most extensive critique of architecture under the conditions of the valorisation of capital. The architecture students saw their education as not relevant enough for their professional practice. According to them, it emphasised the self-realisation of the individual architect in design over the reality of their salaried work. Instead, they demanded a more contemporary, scientific, cooperative, and interdisciplinary education that was based on the understanding of the position of the salaried architect in the social labour process of building production. The struggle for the reform of architectural education established moments of solidarity between students and professionals in teach-ins around education and organisation. They were both concerned that the reactionary job profile of the autonomous self-employed architect meant that only a few employed architects identified themselves with their changed status as heteronomous salaried architects. This chapter highlights the understanding of architects as wage labourers and their political practice via the integration into the worker’s movement through labour organisation and active participation in unions.