TAL March ‘26 Newsletter
Lobby updates and writing on toothless circularity at La Biennale Venezia
Dear Architectural Workers,
We hope this newsletter finds you well. We at the Architecture Lobby have been active with internal organizing efforts and an increasingly lively reading group discussing Jane McAlevey’s “No Shortcuts”, a key book on labor organizing that’s impacted multiple generations of Architecture Lobby members in years past.
Like many of you, much of our attention lately has been filled by another war of US and Israeli aggression abroad. The people of Iran, like all people, deserve freedom and self-determination from oppression from within and from abroad. There are many architectural workers in the United States from regions engulfed in conflict, and we offer our solidarity with you.
This also has us revisiting the statement we put out with DAARNA, urging the AIA to accept the UIA’s resolution on Palestine. As the American war machine ramps up, both domestically with ICE incarceration at home, and with proposals such as AECOM and Jared Kushner’s Gaza plan abroad, it’s critical to pinpoint how architectural labor is contributing to these projects and where opportunities for resistance exist. If you’re interested in organizing around our demands from that statement, please reach out.
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TAL
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Organizing Committee (OC) meeting - Thursday, March 12th @ 9:00pm EST.
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TAL Green New DeaL (GND) Working Group - Every Monday 7:00pm EST
Architectural Workers organizing for a Just Transition in the Building Sector.
Reading & Discussing Together: No Shortcuts - Jane McAlevey - Starting Sat Feb 21 at 3pm EST Details here - Email info@architecture-lobby.org to signup.
A keystone piece of literature on structure based organizing methods. Level-up your reading with other workers thinking about and applying these methods.
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UC Berkeley Labor Center: Skills to Win Training 2026 - Learn More
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This training is fundamental and insanely applicable to multiple organizing contexts - be that your workplace, community or TAL. 2025 trainees think that if all TAL members went through this training, we’d build power and win our demands much more effectively!
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Direct Action & Mutual Aid:
Donate to anti-carceral de-arrest fund: Mid-West Immigration Bond Fund
Add Jobsite anti-ICE Worker Protections to Your Drawings and Specs: Resources from Arch League of NYC
MEMBER WRITING.
Every newsletter we’d like to publish writing from Lobby members. These pieces do not reflect the positions of the Architecture Lobby as an organization, however we hope to provide a space for a discussion of architectural labor and how to make change in our profession and the world. If you’re interested in contributing to our newsletter, please email us!
TOOTHLESS CIRCULARITY AT LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
By Rand Lemley
As part of his role as curator for La Biennale di Venezia’s 19th International Architecture Exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., Carlo Ratti issued a Circularity Manifesto that participants were required to follow as guidelines. Along with recognizing the role of built environment emissions as part of the climate crisis -- over 40% of total global emissions come from buildings and their creation -- the circularity manifesto laid out seven guiding design principles. These principles are sensible and should be familiar to anyone who has studied upfront carbon and circularity in design. Three worth calling attention to are the mandates to use over 50% reclaimed, renewable, or recyclable materials; design out construction waste; and aim for 100% recycling or reuse of materials. “Along with the manifesto, we issued a 62-page Handbook – developed with Zigeng Wang and Università Iuav di Venezia – which provided tools, regional supply links, and lifecycle assessment protocols. I am proud that most participants embraced this framework as fully as they could,” wrote Ratti when approached for comment. (it should be noted that The Architecture Lobby could not verify receipt of this Circularity Handbook, nor could two other participants in the Arsenale who were contacted for comment)
On the surface, this all looks great! A curator for La Biennale who is taking the waste of such exhibitions seriously, even working with the exhibition designers, Berlin-based sub, to develop low-carbon structures for showcasing and dividing the Arsenale’s Corderie. These columnal skeletons were made of recycled aluminum, CNC-cut MDF, and sawdust 3D-printed into shape. “We applied the same principles to what lay within our control—the exhibition design,” says Ratti. Without verification he stated, “12,784 kg of wood, 30,736 kg of steel, and 5,403 kg of aluminum were recovered for reuse or recycling. The timber, already recycled at sourcing, alone spared more than 100 trees.” Unfortunately, Ratti and his curatorial team’s efforts are only part of the circularity puzzle: they may have had technical solutions, however their Biennale put the quite real and barely feasible burden onto the individual participants of figuring out the circularity of their projects.. A very real opportunity for collective intelligence wasted.
Worse, the technological solution wasn’t even carried through completely. The MDF panels were covered with banner-sized vinyl graphics, themselves plastic with a non-recyclable backing paper. During setup, the Corderie was littered with black plastic bags to collect the backing paper and whatever other waste was created. A 4mx2m space created two bags of vinyl waste itself, and this comes from a smaller participant among the over 300 “curated” by Ratti. Still worse, during the dismantling of the exhibition, a large quantity of the carefully selected and constructed exhibition structures, even those made from the materials identified in the Circularity Handbook, were simply discarded into the alley between buildings in the Arsenale left to rot in the rain. Even if the material was designed to be reused or recycled, the systems of people were not present to ensure that happened. Seeing circularity as a material selection problem stops short of closing the circle.
It is worth noting La Biennale is not the only place this hubris has played out recently. It has been revealed that Sou Foujimoto’s timber ring structure at the Osaka 2025 Expo will be burned for fuel rather than repurposed as intended. Similarly, the 2016 La Biennale saw Alejandro Aravena reuse plasterboard from previous editions as entries to the Arsenale and for the central pavilion at the Giardini only for them to be dumpstered at the end of the event, prevented from entering the exhibition ecosystem again.
Inevitably, some participants blatantly ignored the circularity statement. During dismantling, scores of sacks filled with waste were seen in the Arsenale’s alleys. When the local workers were asked what would happen to the sacks, they said the participants would be taxed for the bags to be transported to the mainland where they would be discarded as waste. And those same workers jackhammered away at concrete installation structures, leaving rubble strewn on the ground. Why care about the circularity manifesto at all if the designers are not present to see the installation be dismantled in such a wasteful and senseless fashion? How can we as participants be so arrogant?
Even many participants who did design for circularity -- finding local materials that could easily be repurposed or reused -- found that there was not a connection to a supply chain on the backend to support their desire for circularity. With its myriad tight canals and reliance on boat traffic rather than boxtrucks or vans, Venice is understandably a difficult place logistically. But there was a notable lack of support from La Biennale for the reuse of materials. One participant had intentionally sized his structures to be modules easy to work with elsewhere and sourced modular LED lighting that could easily be repurposed. They could not find a partner to take the material, whether to reuse immediately or store and sell to another user in the future. La Biennale issued a well-crafted circularity statement, but left the legwork of finding the Collective to its participants and did not even try to organize or understand the context of circularity with locals.
Of course, there are local organizations that try to practice circularity around La Biennale’s wastefulness -- Officina Marghera and R3B, who both started in 2008 as a joined organization, Rebiennale and continue to collaborate with a few national pavilions to find new lives for their material. And the 2023 German Pavilion, Open for Maintenance, focused specifically on celebrating these networks of people. When approached for comment, R3B remarked on the Circularity Handbook and Ratti’s “local scouting initiative, which fortunately involved our friends at OM, for example. We were not informed about it and only found out after registration had closed.” They also made note of past circularity successes: the Workshop Toward the Green Lion, a series of conferences and debates organized by Prohelvetia, the Swiss pavilion, and their Rebiennale group, which involved and continues to involve around 20 commissioners from various national pavilions. Or some other pavilions as Rural Studio in 2016, Anupama Kundoo a few years later, Brazil’s Golden Lion pavilion in 2023, the Hussi installation at the Finnish pavilion in 2023 and many others. Unfortunately, these organizations are not yet scaled to handle transport for all of the Arsenale or national pavilions or the stockpiling of materials until repurposing.
Rather than the responsibility for circularity lying solely with the designer of a one-off installation object or with a single curatorial team, it is proven elsewhere to be borne by an entirely redesigned supply chain with each link consciously choosing to make decisions in benefit of the planet and the protection of its resources. La Biennale’s circularity manifesto and handbook as issued by Carlo Ratti had neither considered this wider network needed to complete the circle, made efforts to integrate them into the exhibition, nor put in place any teeth to enforce the guidelines beyond the already extant taxation on waste. The manifesto was disseminated as a kind of costume or set dressing in the latest fashion of sustainable greenwashing rather than made into something enactable or enforceable. “With more than 300 contributors, the Biennale could not police every project. Instead, we sought to share knowledge and raise the floor of practice” responded Ratti, who as curator should not bear the sole responsibility of the ongoing cultural institution who hired him for a single edition of its exhibition. This requires a scale of change at the institutional level, where La Biennale must see itself as a responsible member of a larger network.
If we are going to see our way out of this climate crisis, architects cannot continue to operate in such a cultural vacuum, issuing empty dictums without a path to implementation. We must embed ourselves and our institutions within both new and extant collective networks on long term projects, recognizing ourselves as coparticipants in the community-driven mission to reduce our demands on Earth’s resources. Architects do not provide solutions; we are part of them alongside everyone else.