I Would Prefer Not To1Herman Melville, “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street,” The Piazza Tales (1856). is an oral history project conducted through audio interviews on the topic of the most important kind of refusal in architects’ toolboxes: refusal of the architectural commission. Decisions to refuse a commission, or withdraw from one, by definition, stay hidden from public scrutiny, and thus also hidden from architectural history. Withdrawals of this kind do not leave paper trails. If at all, they exist as specters of professional gossip, not easy to examine or learn from. And yet, the lessons contained in architects’ deliberations about, and decisions not to engage, are politically relevant and urgent. Decisions not to engage a commission or types of commissions, or commissions with certain characteristics, inevitably forfeit potential profit, placing other values above it, at least momentarily.
Every piece of architecture has a complex story to tell about the agents, constituents, strategic and fortuitous alignments that made it possible, as well as hopes, fears, and stories that architects had told themselves and others in the process of working. I Would Prefer Not To interviews with architects (on the projects they declined to take on) aim to shed light on some of that complexity, insisting on the architects’ ethical deliberations. At what point is a commission not worth it? What kind of line gets drawn with a decision to forfeit the possibility of work? When in one’s career is it possible, or necessary, to make such a decision?
The I Would Prefer Not To project was conceived and produced by Ana Miljački, director of the Critical Broadcasting Lab, co-produced by Julian Andrew Escudero Geltman, and is presented in collaboration with The Architectural League.
In the third episode of season four, host Ana Miljački talks with New York City-based TenBerke about loving projects like children, striking a balance between reverence and irreverence, and measuring a project against a mission statement.
Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith of NYC-based MOS Architects discuss the complex intertwining of work and life, playfulness and the publication of process, feedback between academic culture and the world of practice, and collaborative models.
In the premiere episode of season four, Ana Miljački talks with Germane Barnes about storytelling-as-design impetus, delivering on promises, and his skeptical relationship to emails, among other topics.
Ana Miljački speaks with Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman and Guillermo Gonzalez Ceballos of Mexico City-based practice APRDELESP about their case studies, the creation of architectural institutions, and designing appealing “spaces of encounter.”
Ana Miljački speaks with Adam Yarinsky, Stephen Cassell, and Kim Yao of Architecture Research Office about professional versus academic research, how adhering to pre-articulated values affects relationships with clients, and the benefits and drawbacks of being generalists.
Ana Miljački and Studio Gang founding partner Jeanne Gang discuss architects as the nexus of intersecting issues, advocating on behalf of animals as constituents, and growing one’s own building materials.
Ana Miljački speaks with members of the Mexico City-based group about the tumultuous nature of collective practice and a shifting paradigm in civic architecture.
Ana Miljački speaks with Ann Lui and Craig Reschke of Chicago-based studio Future Firm about expanding the role of the architect, absorbing risk, and what to do when asked to do magic.
In the Season 3 premiere, Ana Miljački speaks with Annabelle Selldorf about how falling in love with projects can result in heartbreak, what it means to transcend style, and the limitations of typological experience.
Ana Miljački and Nina Cooke John discuss feedback loops in the design process, slowness, how institutions engage with communities, and seeing oneself in a monument.
Ana Miljački speaks with Claire Weisz, cofounder of WXY, on structural flexibility as an office, sharing ethical burdens with clients, and advocating on behalf of built and material histories.
Ana talks with Andrés Jaque of the Office for Political Innovation about what it means to be an architectural dissident, the status of formal decisions in his work, and why listening is an important tool for architects.
In this episode, Ana hosts Chandra Robinson of Lever Architecture. They discuss ways to support smaller-scale builders, the importance of proximity in sourcing materials, and balancing innovation with the immediate needs of community and client, among other topics.
In this episode, Ana Miljački speaks with Troy Schaum and Rosalyne Shieh of SCHAUM/SHIEH about matching a client’s ambition with economic feasibility, the privilege of being able to refuse work, the space that emerges out of energetic conflict, and the power of doing nothing.
Atlanta-based architects Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam chat with Ana Miljački about inventiveness and emotional specificity.
Michael Maltzan discusses the architect’s role in negotiating complex scenarios and the potential of long-term client relationships to enable large-scale change.
Ana Miljački speaks with Bryan Lee about design justice and challenging the architectural status quo.
Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich discuss their Boston-based practice, KVA MATx.
Liz Diller of New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro speaks with Ana Miljački about evaluating the ethics of commissions and translating projects for different audiences.
Ana Miljački speaks with Walter Hood about artistic freedom, working with institutions, and succeeding through failure.
Ana Miljački chats with Tod and Billie of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects about the contrasts of institutional versus commercial projects, developing relationships with clients, and finding meaning in work.
Tatiana Bilbao of CDMX-based Tatiana Bilbao Estudio talks with Ana Miljački about working with governmental bodies, social housing, changing office culture, and how to engage the leverage points within systems of power.
Sara Zewde and Ana Miljački talk about alternative ways of doing landscape architecture, racial tokenism, design cyphers, and the value of architects as synthesizers.
Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu of Brooklyn-based studio SO – IL chat with Ana Miljački on a wide range of topics, such as discerning a client’s political intentions, the power of an architectural brand, and the possibility for architecture to transcend its relationship with an institutional client.
Amale Andraos and Dan Wood of NY-based firm WORKac talk with Ana Miljački about different facets of sustainability, the lessons learned from saying yes to everything, and regrets, among other topics.
Ana Miljački discusses the new podcast with Mario Gooden and Paul Lewis.
Critical Broadcasting Lab is a space and a platform for the production of discursive interventions in architecture culture. It was established in 2018 at MIT by Ana Miljački. Its key medium is the architectural exhibition, expanded to include experiments with the entire contemporary ecology of broadcasting media. Its aim is to critique the contemporary, expose its deep histories and mount a form of a strategic preparation for the possibility of seeing and thinking a better and more just future for and through architecture.
Ana Miljački is a critic, curator and Professor of Architecture at MIT, where she teaches history, theory and design. She co-curated OfficeUS for the US Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale with Eva Franch i Gilabert and Ashley Schafer. In 2018 Miljački launched the Critical Broadcasting Lab at MIT, engaged in critical curatorial and broadcasting work, including an ongoing radio show titled “Conversations on Care.” Critical Broadcasting Lab’s work “Sharing Trainers” was included in the São Paulo Architecture Biennale in the fall of 2019, the Lab’s Play Room exhibition took place in the Keller Gallery at MIT in February of 2020, and its Supertall Tetris launched online in December 2021. Miljački is the author of The Optimum Imperative: Czech Architecture for the Socialist Lifestyle 1938-1968 (Routledge, 2017), co-editor of the OfficeUS series of books, guest editor of Praxis 14: True Stories, and editor of Terms of Appropriation: Modern and Architecture and Global Exchange with Amanda Reeser Lawrence (Routledge, 2018), as well as of the Under the Influence symposium proceedings (Actar, 2019).
