Reframing the Factory, 2025
We live in a world of material disconnection, where the processes of globalisation and modernisation have produced a world of material illegibility. Outsourced and offshored, production is an abstract process that happens out of site of it’s consumers - removed from the material pleasures of our everyday lives. The object-oriented culture in which we are situated neglects to acknowledge the labour, skills, knowledge and time contained within physical acts of production.
Supporting an expanded notion of knowledge that includes the tacit, the project acknowledges the importance of the skilled hand in architectural production. Adopting an approach of design through making, architecture is seen as a material and physical practice, where the drawing can be an analogue - something that facilitates the relations of technique, material and process to develop between the drawing and the building. Contextualising these ideas against the accessibility of CAD/CAM technologies - processes that have made possible a direct link between concept and production - the notion of machine-craft is a key concept.
Seeing architecture as continuous in nature, the project considers a reciprocal process of inhabitation and production, reframing the typically productive site of the workshop as one of creativity, invention, and education. A guiding principle thoughout is that of tectonics; seeing the physical connections that constitute what a building literally is - an assemblage of elements - and what is seeks to say about itself, as synonymous. Moments in the building seek to not only highlight the influence of the skilled hand, but also how this can interact with contemporary technologies to produce novel outcomes.
Blurring the line between conceptual and physical labour - both spatially and programmatically, a proposal for a school of fabrication sited in central Turin calls for a change in attitudes and policy towards places of urban industry, sites of production, and modes of knowledge.
We live in a world of material disconnection, where the processes of globalisation and modernisation have produced a world of material illegibility. Outsourced and offshored, production is an abstract process that happens out of site of it’s consumers - removed from the material pleasures of our everyday lives. The object-oriented culture in which we are situated neglects to acknowledge the labour, skills, knowledge and time contained within physical acts of production.
Supporting an expanded notion of knowledge that includes the tacit, the project acknowledges the importance of the skilled hand in architectural production. Adopting an approach of design through making, architecture is seen as a material and physical practice, where the drawing can be an analogue - something that facilitates the relations of technique, material and process to develop between the drawing and the building. Contextualising these ideas against the accessibility of CAD/CAM technologies - processes that have made possible a direct link between concept and production - the notion of machine-craft is a key concept.
Seeing architecture as continuous in nature, the project considers a reciprocal process of inhabitation and production, reframing the typically productive site of the workshop as one of creativity, invention, and education. A guiding principle thoughout is that of tectonics; seeing the physical connections that constitute what a building literally is - an assemblage of elements - and what is seeks to say about itself, as synonymous. Moments in the building seek to not only highlight the influence of the skilled hand, but also how this can interact with contemporary technologies to produce novel outcomes.
Blurring the line between conceptual and physical labour - both spatially and programmatically, a proposal for a school of fabrication sited in central Turin calls for a change in attitudes and policy towards places of urban industry, sites of production, and modes of knowledge.
Reframing the Factory, 2025.