LABOUR! and the Strength of a Union

Making Labour Visible

LABOUR! is an installation by Netherlands Angry Architects (NAA!), developed in collaboration with FNV, examining labour conditions, collective organising and solidarity within architecture and the wider creative sector. Developed as an active exhibition and public organising platform, the project brings together the realities of architects, designers, cultural workers and builders working in industries increasingly shaped by precarity, unpaid overtime, individual negotiation and invisible labour. LABOUR! creates a space for workers to reclaim agency by recognising these conditions not as individual struggles, but as shared structural issues that demand collective responses. Rather than presenting architecture through individual authorship or polished image production, the project foregrounds the systems of ongoing labour that sustain the built environment, from the studio to the construction site, positioning architecture as a collective practice grounded in solidarity and collective agency.

Infrastructures for Collective Power

Borrowing its visual language from temporary construction supports and workers’ infrastructures, LABOUR! is built from scaffold elements, mesh panels, concrete blocks, timber and reused materials. The installation functions as an exhibition, archive, meeting point and temporary workers’ assembly, where testimonies, labour statistics, workers’ rights and collective research are presented alongside networks for organising. A central communal table hosts discussions, workshops and informal gatherings throughout DDW, allowing the space to evolve through the people who occupy it. Together with FNV, LABOUR! situates working conditions in Dutch architecture and design within a broader international struggle for workers’ rights. By connecting trade-union networks with grassroots organising initiatives, including those united through Architectural Workers International (AWI), the project highlights how shared challenges can become a basis for solidarity across borders. Visitors are invited to contribute testimonies, access organising resources and connect with others, turning the installation into both an infrastructure for solidarity and an invitation to collective action.