making by proxy

8/20/2019 Making by Proxy

1/8

ORWARThe Architecture and Design Journal of the AIA National Associates Comm


2/8

FORWARD

SUBMISSIONS Forward welcomes the submission of essays, projects and responses to articles.Submitted materials are subject to editorial review. All Forward issues arethemed, so articles and projects are selected relative to the issue’s specicsubject.

Please contact the Forward Director, Olivia Graf Doyle, [email protected] if you are interested in contributing.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATES COMMITTEE (NAC) EXECUTIVE BOARD

Haley Gipe, Assoc. AIA - ChairWayne Mortensen, Assoc. AIA - Associate DirectorAshley Clark, Assoc. AIA- Senior Associate DirectorVenesa Alicea, AIA, LEED AP BD+C - Advocacy Director Jared Hueter, Assoc. AIA - Community & Communications DirectorCesar Gallegos, Assoc. AIA - Knowledge & Programming DirectorBrent Castro, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP - AIAS LiaisonErin Murphy, AIA, LEED AP - AIA Staff Director, Staff Liaison

NATIONAL ASSOCIATES COMMITTEE MISSIONThe National Associates Committee is dedicated to representing andadvocating for Associates, both mainstream and alternative, in the national,regional, state, and local components of the AIA.

FORWARD MISSION

To be the architectural journal of young, aspiring architects and designers of thebuilt environment specically targeting design issues.

FORWARDOlivia Graf Doyle, Assoc. AIA - DirectorC.A. Debelius, Assoc. AIA - Assistant DirectorCindy Louie, Assoc. AIA - Assistant Director Janice Ninan, Assoc. AIA - Assistant DirectorChris Werner, Assoc. AIA - Assistant Director

Special thanks to Peer Reviewers Gregory Marinic, Meg Jackson and Joe Lawton

FORWARD 113: CRAFTSpring 2013. Volume 13, No. 1. Published bi-annually by the AIA.

COVER IMAGE

Stay Down, Champion, Stay Down by SPORTS

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS1735 New York Ave., NWWashington, DC 20006-5292

P: 800-AIA-3837 or 202-626-7300F: 202-626-7547www.aia.org/nac ISSN 2153-7526Copyright and Reprinting: (C) 2012 AIA. All Rights Reserved.

Each article reects the opinions of the individual authors and not the AmericanInstitute of Architects. © Copyright of Individual Articles belongs to the Author.All image permissions are obtained by the articles’ authors and © Copyright ofArticle Images belong to the Authors


3/8

Hair, Spikes, Cattail &Turkeyfootby W.H. Vivian Lee

Bogota Brick and the Tradition

of Colombian Craftby Carrie Gammell

Craft in Educationby Jeremy Chinnis

State of the Artby Greg Corso and Molly Hunker

How Carpentry Became Craftby Chris Werner

Topics: Craftby Olivia Graf Doyle

01

07

21

43

65

81

CrafINSIDE

Craftyby Marc Manack & Frank Jacobus

Hybrid Identities

by Gregory Marinic & Meg Jackson

FORWAD Team Bios

Thinking + Makingby C.A. Debelius

Modernist Cabinby Timothy Dolan &

R. Chadwick Everhart

Making by Proxyby Brian Kelly

89

99

107

113

135

159


4/8

MAKING BY PROXY:A CONTEMPORARY DEFINITION OF

MANUFACTURING

Image01_Worksh

by Brian M. Kelly


5/8

Positioning ‘craft’

In her writing, Concepts of Craft , JulietteMacDonald positions craft in regards to itsassociation with both ne art and design. Art,design, and craft are of the same lineage – theartist and/or designer was also a craftsman. Asindustrialization took hold, more goods wereproduced by machine, leaving the craftsman

marginalized in the process. Through a purposeful

retreat and shunning of technology, craftsmenthemselves began to sacrice the stature of craftas they returned to their workshops to do it ratherthan talk about it. At the same time, proponentsof craft attempted to position industrializationwith the reduction of society’s core values andassociated this trend with less choice and a lossof control. MacDonald asserts:

In the latter half of the 20th century, craft hadagain been elevated to a place of stature throughseveral theorists reconsidering its value inregards to art and design. Greenhalgh addressesthis argument when he states that “while itis important not to fantasize or fetishize craftas a thing in itself, ultimately, it really doesn’tmatter how it all came together; the point is, it istogether.”9 These denitions possess a commoncharacteristic where craft is a skill or quality inthe act of making, not a noun describing theconstruct itself.

Deceit and Lies

For full comprehension, it is essential to unpack theetymology of several words commonly used in thecontext of contemporary making. Fabrication, andits root word fabricate, has Latin origins relatingto “make, construct, fashion, build.” Interestingly,it also has an offshoot at the end of the 19thcentury relating to “telling a lie.” Craft is denedas “skill or ability, especially in handiwork” butalso as a “skill or ability used for bad purposes;

cunning; deceit; guile.” It is not accidental thatthis root coincides with the time in which societyseparates making and the machine. McCullough,in his book Abstracting Craft, historically positionsthe term craft illustrating how industrializationcontinually created an adversarial conditionbetween the hand and the means through whichsomething is made. In essence, the machineeither created more separation between handand material, or completely removed the handfrom the manipulation of material and thusthe creation of works. McCullough continuesto dene this change by identifying craft asproducing works (originals as compared to art)

and industrialization creating products (massproduction for consumption).10 Craft was seenas respectful to historical and cultural lineagewhereas industrialization carried viewpointsembracing articiality and fakery.

The connection and use of the word deceitful might also be positioned withe process of making in an architectfrom conception to construction. Artranslations to communicate architecand form. This often involves visthrough methods of seeing which donatural vision including orthographiclinear perspective, unrolled or developand fake rendered images. The and abstraction of the anticipated aproject is inevitable in the context of arepresentation where suppression odimension is required to create a set for construction. These fabricated impurpose, but do it through visual mand suggestive projection.

While legibility is seen as the ultimarchitectural representation in the construction, the truth is architects oa veil that exists within the translationthe design professional from liability,

leaves means and methods to theand distances the architect’s hand fof making. This haptic separation icertain type of mystery to industrialiwhere communication between makis obscured. Within this gap is whedistrust exists and causes critics to chmechanized fabrication tool as a valexhibiting craft.

Disciplinary Fissures

A pair of ssures that began during the Rand Industrial Revolution situated a

regards to both their role in craft, andthe machine in a contemporary socie

The institutionalization of the aprofession necessitated that archite

“Craft practice and theory appeared to be static, caught upin nostalgia and ideas of ruralism. Instead of keeping pace

with developments in art or architecture, craft practicebecame the vehicle for a retreat from the present, a genrebest thought of in terms of its adherence to local, vernacular,and historical traditions rather than to social and aestheticinnovativeness and originality.”¹Denitions of craft have varied in the postindus-trial era and are often highly indicative of thetime they reect. In the words of Paul Greenhal-gh, “craft has always been a messy word”2 refer-ring to its shifting associations and alliances with

trades, industry, art, and design. He continuesstating it as “a uid set of practices, propositionsand positions that shift and develop, sometimesrapidly.”3 Denis Diderot dened craft as “thename given to any profession that requires theuse of the hands.”4 Juliette MacDonald traces

the term to Medieval times “where it suggested acombination of intelligence, skill, and strength.”5

Malcolm McCullough denes craft as “skilledwork applied toward practical ends.”6 DavidPye positions craftsmanship at the upper end of

a spectrum of a more general term – workman-ship.7 Juhanni Pallasmaa states that “craftsman-ship arises from manual skill, training and expe-rience – personal commitment as well as judg-ment.”8


6/8

the discipline with a similar stature to that of thesciences and mathematics. This effort causeda continual drift of the architect away from theconstruction site into a role where he or sherepresented the act and product of constructionat a distance from the materials. William Massiestates, “prior to the industrial era, architectswere the purveyors of the built. As a result ofthe industrial revolution, industry itself becamethe purveyor of the built.”11 Geometricaltreatises and laws of physics were instrumental

in the institutionalization of the architect proper,essentially assisting in their transition from theconstruction site. The development of drawingsand drawing techniques described the processesin which craft could be achieved and theircharacteristics became more about the image ofthe building. This was an important step as thearchitect became, for the rst time, at least onestep removed from the act of building and thescene of craft.

Parallel to this condition within both theprofession and society at large, a polarity arosewith regards to the role of machine making in

modern life. Architects had a vested interest inthe argument due to an obvious connection tothe act of constructing architecture. At the core ofthis polemic was a view that anything producedby hand, bearing the traces of its making,possessed more value. Products made throughindustrial processes were viewed as impersonaland reected a degradation of society and a lackof individuality. Juliette MacDonald states:

“For them [craft advocates], the industrially produced objects represented the divisionof labour, the loss of creative freedom, andthe suspension of mental processes, whereas

crafts signied the culmination [of] individual production, independent creativity and evenmoral virtue.” 12

John Ruskin went as far as saying “for it is not thematerial, but the absence of the human labour,

which makes the thing worthless.”13 Additionally,industrialization represented another level ofdisplacement after the removal of the architectfrom the construction site and further distancedthe architect from material and the place inwhich craft would occur. Industrialization alsoestablished a revised role for the hand in theprocess of making where, for the rst time,making was done without a haptic connectionto the material – in effect ushering in making byproxy.

Manufacture

manufacture -noun (1560s) “something made byhand,” from L. manu, ablative of manus “hand”+ factura “a working,” from pp. stem of facere “toperform.”As the denition suggests, the term ‘manufacture’was originally associated with the making ofartifacts with the one’s hands. At the heart of theposition held by craftsman and their supporterswas a desire for the connection between themaker and the made as if the material could speakand communicate its desires and properties to

the artisan. Juhanni Pallasmaa states, “The workof the craftsman implies collaboration with hismaterial.”14 Instead of imposing a preconceivedidea or shape, he needs to listen to his material.“Louis Kahn famously asked the brick what it wouldlike to be, receiving an answer that it would liketo be an arch. While obviously the material itselfcannot verbally communicate, there are waysin which a material might impart its preferencethrough a sort of resistance to certain operativeprocedures. For example, any woodworkerknows that wood performs differently basedon the direction of its grain with regards to themanipulation. This communication is typically in

relation to certain material properties that reectpreferences in tooling and joinery. A material’saversion to certain techniques or methods isestablished through a haptic connection throughthe tool – a connection that is denied through themachine.

If a required component of craft is, as Diderotexplained, the use of the hand as a means tomanipulate material, it was most often donethrough the use of tools. Pallasmaa writes aboutthe connection of the hand and the tool asessentially one apparatus where the tool in thehand become one – the tool as an extension ofthe hand and the hand as an extension of thetool.15

Craftsmen’s allegiance

to the hand as an es-sential component inthe act of making, andsubsequent denial ofthe potential of ma-chine in the making ofproducts, eventuallyisolated the artisan toniche markets.McCullough elabo-rates on the percep-tion stating “at best,craft was the mereexecution of precon-

ceived ends; moreoften it was a mere hobby. Art – which was thetrue search – became increasingly independentof technique.” 16

The Role of the Machine

In the advancement of society, technology oftenplays an essential role in the tilling of new fertileground in which change can take place. It is notwithout this partnership with the craftsman thatthis advancement becomes more meaningful andrelative to society at large. Culture and societyare human experiments and cannot take placeoutside of human interaction.

The American experiment largely embracedindustrialization, seeing it as a way to create anew world where the machine was claimed asa partner in its identity and signicant in the

generation of a strong economic envia lecture from 1901, Frank Lloyd Wrto the machine as “the great fodemocracy.”17 This is exhibited thronumber of inventions and developmeplace on American soil through the laearly 20th centuries; cotton gin, telegrmachine, airplane, and the assembly a few. The machine was seen as a pa

new identitcritical to

independen

Making by

Making oconstructs pre-industriaarchitectureproducts, constituted relationship maker andtypically only throug

The separcontinually been expanded with thelled by translations including dramodels, and eventually digital softwadevices such as tablets and mice. revolution produces models and output to print drawings that are tranby a builder. By the end of the 20th architect’s separation from material mhad become even greater to the extand large, architects lost intimate with the making process. This coneventually elevated to a point wherrealized that this separation had somthe profession in regards to its invothe realization of ideas. It had also sremoved material studies and protothe design process, eliminating the for material feedback.

“Pallasmaa writes about theconnection of the hand andthe tool as essentially oneapparatus where the tool inthe hand become one – thetool as an extension of thehand and the hand as anextension of the tool.”¹5


7/8

However, digital fabrication offers the potentialfor the maker, in this case the architect, toreestablish a connection to material and makingprocesses. David Pye’s denition of craftsmanshipas “worksmanship using any kind of technique orapparatus, in which the quality of the result is notpredetermined, but depends on the judgment,dexterity, and care which the maker exercises ashe works.”18 He labels this as the workmanship ofrisk where the quality of the end result embracesthe potential of risk contrasting this with the

workmanship of certainty where risk is averted. Hedoes not position craft with regards to hand versusmachine, but rather risk versus certainty statingthat the latter would be “all but meaningless.”19 Neri Oxman denes craft in a contemporarycontext as “a guiding instruction-set, a formalism,which merges knowledge of application with an

instrumentality of material organization.”20 Bothauthors encourage the maker to embrace theopportunity of a conversation between not themaker and the made, but rather the maker andthe process of making.

Within a contemporary fabrication context,the rapid prototyping machine is not merely anextension of its ancestor whereby its role is simplyan unintelligent extension of the designer. As Pyesuggests, it is not as much the question of hand or

machine, but how the tool is being engaged intothe process as an informant of the possibilitiesthat might reside within the constraints. Computeraided manufacturing (CAM) is the use of digitalsoftware and tools in the process of making.This article is foregrounding the use of the term‘manufacture’ in digital fabrication suggesting

that the hand, while further removed in actualproximity, is still quite connected to the architects’representations as well as the movements of thefabrication tool. This connection enhances acontemporary practice situation that includesmany translations, characters, and technologiesexisting between the conception of the architectand the made construct. Making by proxyattempts to tap into the history of the craftsman’smaking process where the mystery is lessenedand architectural representation is not used as

a veil but a communicator of information andintent.

The degree of involvement varies with eachapplication. In some cases, the hand is involvedonly to the extent that clarity of intention ismaintained within the control and manipulationof the machine’s operations. In this case, thehand is physically distanced through the softwareinterface but the movements of the hand projectingintentional movements of the machine are clearly

Image03_Variable casting bed

Image02_Digitally fabricated installation

present. This can be seen through a large numberof fabrication projects where the comprehensionof the machine’s abilities are coupled with thedesigner’s intentionality to produce nely craftedprecision objects. (Image 2) In other cases, wheretechnology such as parametric software and servo

motors are involved, one might allow for actualmovements of the hand translated through thesoftware to effect change in the made construct.An example of this can be seen in a casting bedmade by MIT architecture graduate student NeilLegband. This project uses software-controlledmotors that adjust a exible casting bed, in turnoffering the ability to develop a large quantity ofsurface variations. (Image 3) This project allowsa one-to-one connection of maker to made, andoffers the visual feedback that the traditionalcraftsman relied upon.

In each of these cases, the deceit of representation

as a veil between maker and made is signicantlylessened and an intentional connection isreestablished between hand and tool. Accordingto Pye and Oxman’s denitions of craft, makingby proxy offers a contemporary version ofmanufacturing – or making by hand. There is

no doubt that the traditional craftsmto create artifacts that are not onlbut also speak to the process of makfabrication and its tools are withinlineage and offer the opportunity foto again be one step closer to the m

its manipulation through movementswhich are translated through a manew manufacturing , made by handprocess that sees the machine as a pfuture trajectory of craft within the darchitecture. Once again, craft can taas a valued component to the architeand not just something we hope foseries of instructional representations


8/8

References1. Juliette MacDonald, “Concepts of Craft” inExploring Visual Culture: Denitions, Concepts,Contexts edited by Matthew Rampley (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2005), 39.2. Paul Greenhalgh, The Persistence of Craft: TheApplied Arts Today (London: A&C Black, 2002), 1.3. Greenhalgh, Persistence, 1.4. Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaireraisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers(France: 1765)5. MacDonald, Concepts, 34.

6. Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft (Boston:The MIT Press, 1998), 22.7. David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship(London: A&C Black, 2007), 20.8. Juhanni Pallasmaa, “The Working Hand” inThe Thinking Hand: The Existential and EmbodiedWisdom in Architecture (New York: Wiley, 2009)51.9. Greenhalgh, Persistence, 1.10. McCullough, Abstracting, 16.

11. William Massie, “Remaking In A PoCulture” in Fabricating Architecture: SeReadings In Digital Design and Manufaedited by Robert Corser (New York: PriArchitectural Press, 2010), 102.12. Macdonald, Concepts, 38.13. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of A(New York: John Wiley, 1849)14. Pallasmaa, Working, 54.15. Pallasmaa, Working, 47.16. McCullough, Abstracting, 15.17. Frank Lloyd Wright, “The Art and CMachine” in The Industrial Design Readby Carma Gorman, (New York: Allwort2003), 55.18. Pye, Workmanship, 20.19. Pye, Workmanship, 25.20. Neri Oxman, “Digital Craft: FabricaBased Design in the Age of Digital Prodin Workshop Proceedings for UbicompInternational Conference on UbiquitouComputing. (Innsbruck, Austria: 2007),

Image CreditsImage01_ Image from Diderot’s Encyclopedie, oudictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et desmetiers, 1765Image02_Image and design by author Image03_Image and design by Neil Legband withpermission

Brian M. Kelly

Brian M. Kelly is a licensed architect in the State of NebAssistant Professor at the UNL College of Architecture. teaching experience includes Drury University’s Hammof Architecture in Springeld, MO and California PolytUniversity at San Luis Obispo. Prior to joining the facuBrian served as lead designer in the ofce of Randy Browdesigning several award-winning projects of various

scales. In addition to teaching, he is a partner with AToofce that focuses on smaller scale architectural projeand graphics. Brian’s teaching focus is in the areas odesign, architectural representation theory, and thbetween making and marking.

“Digital fabrication

and its tools arewithin the samelineage and offerthe opportunity for

architects to againbe one step closer tothe material and itsmanipulation...

making by proxy

Documents