Intermediate 6 continues to investigate architecture across culture, technology, politics and socioeconomic shifts. This year, we are focusing on ‘work’, in a context where the material aspects of so-called immaterial labour are becoming impossible to ignore.

The illusion that we live in a knowledge economy, where most work can be done on a laptop with Wi-Fi, is crumbling. From the collapse of the digital nomad economy and blackouts caused by energy-hungry data centres or chatbots, to the creation of hard copies of the internet in the case of government censorship and parallel efforts to bring manufacturing onshore, the built environment is both shaping and being shaped by new forms of labour. Some of these are visible, others less so – cloud kitchens, garage biolabs and resilience factories among them.

Intermediate 6 will seek to understand the bodies, materials, spaces and energy flows that sustain these emerging yet historically rooted working models. We continue to question our agency as active participants within the labour markets we critique. As architects and workers, we are often engaged in creating symbolic products, social relations and images, while entering an industry subject to economic fluctuations and shifts in modes of production, including AI.

In Term 1, our research will unfold through seminars unpacking key labour-related ideas and visits to different architectural manifestations of novel work models. This will inform writing, multi-scalar drawing and CGI animation, alongside self-directed ‘work experience’ during Open Week, before ending the term with a design provocation. In Term 2, we will identify strategies for intervention by studying precedents and making new propositions using conventional architectural representation. To experience different kinds of spaces of work, production and reproduction, we will travel to Hong Kong and Shenzhen to visit electronics factories, maker spaces and local family-run businesses. Term 3 will focus on reworking each individual project into a multimedia pitch which can communicate with audiences beyond the school.