The Office of Human Resources (OHR) is a critical spatial practice operating within the instability of capitalism. We use spatial work in various forms to postulate and question the politics of space, identity, colonial history, and extractive economy to get closer to a new collective future.
Largely started by Robert Owens and Charles Babbage in the late 18th century, the field of human resources is a product of early industrial capitalism. It began with a focus on labor unions and the relationship between quality of life and productivity. However, its ubiquitous current form is vague and often serves as a bureaucratic nightmare. So in an era of technologically advanced capitalism, what does it mean to recruit, train, manage, compensate, yet comply as workers? When western forms of colonization established labor as a way to rationalize violence, how can we deconstruct the legality of labor to immaterial forms such as body and emotions? As precariats, can we combat social inequity while adapting to new systems in flux? OHR operates within this realm of societal questions and provocations.
/// OHR is currently directed by Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee.
image: still from Playtime (1967), Jacques Tati.
Stephanie is an architectural designer and researcher based in NY. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Studio Art with high distinction from Wesleyan University. She completed her Master of Architecture from Rice University where she was awarded the Morris R. Pitman Fellowship, Margaret Everson-Fossi Award, Mary Ellen Hale Lovett Fellowship, and Brett Michael Detamore Research Grant for Intellectual Studies. She worked as a designer with Shigeru Ban Architects; OPEN Architecture; Carlo Ratti Associati; and managed exhibitions and fabrications for the artist Lee Bul. Lee has completed several residencies including the Arts Center Residency by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Art Omi. She was selected as a Fellow for the Future Architecture Platform in 2020, and has exhibited her work at Haus der Arkitektur (AU), Verse WORK/SHOP (NY), and citygroup (NYC). She taught at Bard Architecture as an Architecture Teaching Fellow, and currently at Cornell AAP as a Strauch Early Career Fellow.
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image: Hugo Gernsback, The isolator (1925)