Kieran Timberlake 2004
From UANotebook
citation
Refabricating Architecture
notes
page xii:
"Hundreds of years ago, all of architecture could be held in the intelligence of a single maker, the master builder. Part architect, part builder, part product and building engineer, and part materials scientist, the master builder integrated all of the elements of architecture in a single mind, heart, and hand. The most significant, yet troubling, legacy of modernism has been the specialization of the various elements of building once directed and harmonized by the master builder. The multiple foci at the core of specialization have given rise to a world that is advancing while fragmenting."
...
"All complex human endeavors, including architecture, require a regulating structure to organize the inherent chaos that underlies its making. Our regulatory structures today are information management tools, not the idealized mathematical constructs of classical architecture. Modern humanism is communication, not geometry.
page 27:
Filippo Brunelleschi -- "master builder" of the Renaissance.
page 29:
"No architects today think of themselves as master builders. The disjunction of the various elements of master building has been institutionalized over the past few centuries by means of separate educational programs, separate licensing and insurance requirements, and separate professional organizations."
page 31:
"While we cannot return to the idea of the master builder embodied in a single person, the architect can force the integration of the several spun-off disciplines of architecture --construction, product engineering, and materials science-- all with the aim of reuniting substance with intent."
page 51:
"The regulating lines of an information management system are the new Modulor."
page: 53:
"The making of architecture is an act of organized chaos."
page 55:
suggesting flattening out on a huge scale:
"Business management consultants... are coming to believe that a hierarchical method of command and control rarely parallels reality."
hmmm... take that Daniel Burnham?
page 56:
framing versus quilting. framing (old architecture method) is sequential in which heirarchical parts are sequentiall asembled into a whole... aka building by getting stuff to the site and then assembling from there... it's the old, linear assembly line.
quilting involves parallel production in which integrated assemblies can be made in various locations by various makers and then assembled to form a whole. the auto/ship industries now function this way.
"quilting, unlike framing, requires only a conceptual, not physical, framework" (p. 57)
page 65:
"the irony of modular assembly is that it places a premium on a complete understanding of the whole as a prerequisite to strategies for fragmentation. Visualization is regulatory structure."
page 69:
grand blocks, modules, and chunks
page 111:
"mass customization is rapidly replacing mass production. mass production was all about the economy of making things in quantity, but mass customization does not depend on quantity to be cost effective. mass customization is about cultural production as opposed to the industrial output of mass production. in other words, rather than decide among options produced by industry, the customer determines what the options will be by participating in the flow of design process from the very start."
this is very idealistic and all... but can it really work in the bottom-line driven world?
page 119:
"material can be a progenitor of form"
