The Carriage in the Needle:
Building Design and Flexible Specialization Systems
This article offers some reflections on the distri-
bution of design responsibilities in the building
process, the growth of consulting profiles, and the
expanding role of trade specialists and compo-
nent suppliers. In addressing the topic, building
design is compared to a system of production and
industrial organizationtheory used to discuss
characteristics and transformations in its division
of labor. The framework adopted makes it clear
that the networks of collaborations that character-
ize building design increasingly resemble “flexible
specialization” systems. The article elaborates on
the ambivalence of this situation, which may en-
hance architecture’s expressive potential but re-
quires the conceptual restructuring of building
and architectural design as well as a careful re-
consideration of the notion of professionalism.
THEORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION IS ONE OF
the central concerns of the industrial age.
Over time, the debate around it has
changed, evolving from a locus of social
philosophy-the case until the mid-nine-
teenth century-to a pivotal element in the
definition, or the critique, of industrial sys-
tems and policies. The breadth of the result-
ing discipline notwithstanding, the matter
at stake today is still that identified by early
theorists; it concerns the apparently simple
distinction between how things can be pro-
duced within socially developed systems: by
subdividing an artifact into different tasks
or by bringing different components to-
gether to create a more complex object.
Karl Marx has perhaps explained the
difference between the two in the clearest
terms for the layperson.’ In Chapter 14 of
the first volume of Capital, he uses, among
other examples, the manufacture of needles
and carriages.*
Needles, he says, paraphrasing Adam
Smith’s previous depiction of the pin fac-
tory, are indivisible artifacts that go through
different stages of transformation; they are
made by reorganizing what was initially the
Journal ofArrhiterntral Education, pp. 134-142
0 1999 ACSA, Inc.
February I999 JAE 52/3
PAOLOTOMBESI,
University ofMelbourne
domain of one artisan into easier tasks that
can be routinized and assigned to different
artificers. Production takes place as a series
of connected phases in which the finished
product of one phase represents the raw
material for the phase that follows. Because
of the specialization of the process-each
task holding little meaning independent of
the final output-the intellectual contribu-
tion and decisional power of labor are mini-
mized. The whole production cycle must
thus be planned and controlled by someone
capable of setting goals, envisioning the ar-
tifact, and defining the steps involved.
Carriage making, on the contrary, in-
volves the gathering of different artisans, and
the collection of products that will fulfill dif-
ferent needs within the final, more complex,
assembly. Production is organized into dis-
tinct, coherent sets of operations that main-
tain their own logic even inside the main
process and can be conducted in parallel.
The workforce involved does not lose origi-
nal skills and knowledge; i t rather hones
them by concentrating on the same class of
problems over time and by maintaining de-
cisional power over the craft performed.
The sense of needles and carriages, of
course, goes beyond the trades involved in
their fabrication. Using Marx’s vocabulary,
needles are a metaphor of “serial” produc-
tion and “detailed” (or “technical”) division
of labor, seeds of the factory system and the
assembly flow-line of modern times. Car-
riages are the ideal type of a “social” division
of responsibilities, whereby complex assem-
blies are produced by means of cooperative,
independent knowledge. In opposition to
needles as forerunners of industrialization,
carriages identify a developed form of craft-
based manufacture.
T o many people, associating design
to a process of production is anathema. Pro-
fessions deal with intangibles like knowl-
edge, theories, and ideas, which cannot be
1 34
trivialized and treated as goods. Yet in the
course of its history as a professional disci-
pline, architecture has consistently adopted,
or implied, a view of not only building, but
also design, in line with either one of the
paradigms just described and in eventual
denial of the other.
Pins and needles have drawn the atten-
tion of designers and architectural institutions
since the beginning of the modern profession.
In 1747, Jean-Rodolphe Perronet was ap-
pointed chief of the Drawing Office, the fu-
ture Ecole Des Ponts et ChaussCes, in light of
his documented interest in the organization
of pin making.’ The problem of design (and
building) rationalization was starting to be
considered as akin to the transformation of a
handicraft into an industry. In keeping with
this initial choice, the professional idea of de-
sign moved along in parallel to the develop-
ment of the factory system. When, in the first
quarter of the twentieth century, Fordism be-
came the production paradigm of modernity
and the automobile its quintessential icon,
both dominant architectural culture and the
institutions that organize practice in the
United States adopted as an ideal the flow-
line pattern that underlay this industrial
modeL4At the peak of its popularity, roughly
two centuries after Perronet, Welton Becket
was likening the building project to an assem-
bly line moving through the departments of
his office and out to the site5
For the profession, embracing the
“philosophy of the factory” had to do partly
with the cultural pervasiveness of Fordism
and the myth of the manager-engineer that
came with it.6 However, it was also strongly
influenced by the presence of specific orga-
nizational ideas-linearity of production
and concentration of functions-that were
important for the development of a profes-
sional practice of architecture within the in-
dustry (building) within which i t was
embedded. The preconception of linearity
 1. Making needles. (Encyclopedie, ou Diclionnaire Raisonne des
Sciences, des Arts, e l des Metiers par Une Societe de Gens des
Lettres. Mis en Ordre et Publie par M. Diderot, e l quant a la part
Malhernatique par M. D’Alembert, vol. 1 [Paris: 17621, plate 1.
Bailleu Library Special Collection, University of Melbourne.)

2. Carriages. (Encyclopedie. vol. 9 [Paris; 17711, plate 9. Bailleu Library Special Collection. 3. The carriage joiner. (Encyclopedie, vol. 7 [Paris; 17691, plate
University of Melbourne.) 3. Bailleu Library Special Collection, University of Melbourne.)

gave the evolving profession, fighting off the
competition of developers, builders, and en-
gineers, a way to legitimize and strengthen
the position of the architect by placing the
role at the beginning of the cycle.
This position, however, implied a
technologically prescriptive function-that
is, the responsibility to prescribe all of the
steps involved in the fabrication of the build-
ing to the trades. This meant the ability to
define and organize the information neces-
sary to envision the overall idea, to produce
its various physical components, and to de-
termine the processes required for the
implementation of the plan.
Linear prescriptiveness was progres-
sively defined (or accommodated) by the in-
stitutional model of practice and used to
structure its legal and administrative frame-
work. The literature on practice published by
the American Institute of Architects (AIA)
over the last eighty years-for instance, The
Arcbitert j Handbook of Professional Practice,
with all its didactic attachments on contrac-
tual agreements-shows the evolution of this
process. Already situated between “program”
and “construction” in the early descriptions
of the twenties, the design task went through
a process of steady refinement in subsequent
documents. These further specified its inter-
nal organization and contents, eventually
subdividing it into the distinct and function-
ally clear stages of representation-schematic
design, design development, and construc-
tion drawing phases-we know today. The
structure thus defined implied that the devel-

135 Tornbesi
 , ,
4. The carriage joiner. (Encyclopedie, vol. 7 [Paris; 17691, plate
4. Bailleu Library Special Collection, University of Melbourne.)
opment of the design task was progressive;
that the output of one phase established the
constraints for the phase that followed; that
the focus of the work gradually shifted from
conception to implementation (according to
a somewhat dimensional progression, from
overall massing to detail); and that design
reached a stage where it could be finalized
and passed on to be executed by the construc-
tion component.'
The theoretical ability and power to
prescribe (i.e., to provide instructions) re-
flected in this model explains the conceptual
association between the work of the archi-
tect (plus fellow engineering professionals)
and the process of design and the separation
of design from construction. Regardless of
the type of work actually performed, it
would be difficult to consider any other par-
ticipant in the building effort as a design
provider; in fact, a context in which instruc-
tions are received from above (or upstream)
lacks design's primary connotation: the au-
tonomy to define the problem or devise a
solution to it. By definition, construction
and manufacturing receive and process the
architect's instructions, at most translating
February 1999 JAE 52/3
.--
,*
I.,
5. The wheelwright. (Encyclopedie, vol. 2 [Paris: 17631, plate 4
Bailleu Library Special Collection, University of Melbourne.)
them into a format appropriate to the par-
ticular stage of work.
Through its separation of (profes-
sional) designers and contractors, then, lin-
earity conditioned the idea of design itself.
By concentrating on the work of architects
and engineers and by excluding from its
framework of reference many operations
carrying design content but in the hands of
contractors or manufacturers, the paradigm
of work outlined tended to suggest a close
association, if not an identity, between
building design and architectural design.
Needless to say, the tendency to fol-
low a needle-type production model con-
tains a strong ideological component and
has been the constant target of an architec-
tural countertradition: the antiprofessional,
antifactory system, anti-design-distinct-
from-building intellectual thread that goes
from John Ruskin to Frank Lloyd Wright
and all the way up to Jersey DeviL8
The reality of modern architecture is
that the production of the project has never
been a needle-only kind of business. Archi-
tectural design has always been comple-
mented, integrated, paralleled, or challenged
1 36
by construction-manufacturing strategies,
decisions about building craftsmanship,
construction equipment, site layout, erec-
tion sequences, materials selection, and
trade coordination, none of which were
contained in the information provided by
the professional design team, but instead
were developed by parties not officially rec-
ognized as design contributors. This divi-
sion of responsibilities can and should be
read in light of two elements: architectural
designers' reliance on tradition or their es-
cape from it. Tradition would give shape to
conventional technologies mastered and
maintained by builders and craftsmen. In-
novation would spin off design responsibili-
ties for products or techniques not yet tested
or formalized enough to be prescribed or
controlled by customary professional prac-
tice to manufacturers.
Yet for quite a long time, because of
the accepted association between design
and architectural design, the culture of
practice managed to downplay these aspects
to conceal the carriage inside the needle and
referred to an industrial structure that
hinged on the professional-contractor pair-
ing, the usual design-construction division,
and the traditional information model.
This vertical hierarchical architect-general
contractor-subcontractor flow, alleged a
transfer in large chunks from design to con-
struction, and each phase was initiated after
obtaining complete information from the
previous one.
Among the conditions rendering this
possible was that most design activities per-
formed by construction parties could be ab-
sorbed within the classic organizational
model of the building process. Contribu-
tions would fall by and large within ac-
cepted roles without modifying interrole
relationships. Conventional know-how
would not require formal instructions, and
product development (or engineering) car-
 --

ried out by suppliers could be considered a

manufacturing intratask rather than a build-
ing intertask activity. Moreover, most of this
work would have a degree of technological
resilience-that is, the capacity to achieve
the same goal in different ways, thus allow-
ing site activities to adapt to, rather than re-
sist, the instructions of professional design.
Today, though, the adaptation of de-
sign practice to a professional theory of de-
sign is becoming difficult. Product
-1
complexity, market uncertainty, technologi- 6. The project-deliverysequence at Welton Becket and Associates. (William Hunt, Total Design:
cal innovation, and work liability are rein- Architecture of Welton Becket and Associates [New York: McGraw-Hill, 19741.)
forcing architects' reliance on other parties
to develop the technical aspects of building
design. Although the scope of these aspects
is expanding, their technological and eco-
nomic constraints are also growing stronger.
Increasing autonomy reduces the degree of
adaptability of these tasks to architectural
design, creating quasidisciplines of their
own. This enhances the recognizability of
the work performed under such conditions
and the patterns it follows.
T h e use of trade-produced, hard-
copy design information, for instance, has
grown exponentially, either in the form of
shop drawings, which can easily double the
number of drawings produced by the pro-
fessional team, or actual design-and-build
contracts for specialty trades. These have
transformed several specialized contractors,
traditionally acting as suppliers of elemen- 7. Anonymous cartoon of the Ford assembly line. c. 1913. (Left Curve 5 [19751: 54.)
tary components or building erectors, into
engineers of record for systems they devel- drawing, often exchange prescriptiveness for neering of specific systems (roofing, curtain
oped and installed. Subcontractors' advice is performance, so as to create a transitional wall, cladding, vertical circulation, mainte-
sought even earlier in the process; either in- step in the passage of responsibilities from nance, etc.). With no vested interest in the
formally, through the call for preselection design professionals to contractors and pro- product per se, such consultants play a sort
proposals (inclusive of drawings and mock- vide some leeway in the use of proprietary of agency role to the architect in controlling
ups) that are in fact used for design-develop- technologies. T o maintain an edge in the the proper development of the design. This
ment purposes, or formally, by appointing relationship with design-and-build system de facto expansion of the design team coin-
potential bidders to the project team in fabricators, the architectural profession now cides with the increasing importance of de-
what contracts define as "design-assist" po- often resorts to expert linkages provided by sign packaging and procurement planning
sitions. Partly as a result, the specifications relatively new categories of specialized trade areas, whose definition becomes more and
of complex systems, both in writing and in consultants at ease with the detailed engi- more detached from the logics of the archi-

137 Tornbesi

Geoiech Sutvoying Space
€ 4 Planning
8 The contractual hierarchy of the building process (Roberto Pietroforte, "Communication and
Use of Design Information in the Building Delivery Process" [Ph D Diss , MIT, Civil Engineering.
19921, p 6 0 )
tecture and moves closer to those related to
the swift progress of the site. In the end, the
range of artifacts from which decisions
about the project derive is broader than
what professional handbooks take into ac-
count. It includes product samples and
mock-ups, shop drawings, consultants'
sketches, procurement plans, work break-
down structures, laboratory tests, site lay-
outs, materials-handling procedures, and
other items whose integration is as impor-
tant to the design process as is their variety.
The span and timing of contributions
challenge the very principles of linearity and
concentration on which the professional tra-
dition and the distinction between designers
and builders rest. Information structures are
not nearly as sequential or as hierarchical as
generally accepted; architectural instruc-
tions do not always determine the produc-
tion of technical documents-quite the
opposite: Information for fabrication is fre-
quently produced prior to, or along with,
schematic hypotheses for the larger scale,
often by parties that in theory should not be
there because they belong to the construc-
tion realm. More and more often, the space-
building-fabrication-erection sequence of
the contractual model seems to be reposi-
tioning itself in the guise of parallel design
functions feeding off one another. Within
these functions, some blurring occurs. Pro-
fessional teams are complemented by con-
tractors who are granted judgment
monopoly-a professional trademark-
February 1999 JAE 52/3
U SuppIier s
over their trade or specialty; who then pro-
vide a service with their products; who set
up engineering branches rather than relying
on on-the-job apprenticeship; who have an
interest in repeat work; and who then attach
client agency functions to contract delivery.
In turn, many categories of design profes-
sionals have narrowed their scope of service
to particular stages or problems, releasing
their responsibility from the final overall
output, and bringing up the question of
whether limited services could or should be
considered tradable commodities rather
than professional a d ~ i c e . ~
Making the project less linear-less
needlelike-then defines two (apparently
contradictory) levels of discussion: one prac-
tical, the other theoretical. O n one side (by
reflecting changes in the technology of de-
sign), it raises questions about decision-mak-
ing structures and the maintenance of a
control role for the architect; that is, his or
her ability to exercise authorial functions
from both a conceptual (authorship) and
operative (authority) standpoint. O n the
other side, it affects the very cultural (and le-
gal) framework that defined this role,
prompting the question of whether it is the
epistemological paradigm of practice that
may in fact be changing, or ought to change,
possibly moving from needles to carriages.
The idea that industrial systems are
rediscovering organizational patterns resem-
bling preindustrial, manufacturelike envi-
ronments has a strong currency in today's
1 38
industrial, management, and labor litera-
ture. T w o N o r t h American scholars,
Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, have been
instrumental in fueling this debate with The
Second Industrial Divide: Possibilitiesfor
Prosperity." In the book, Piore and Sabel
bring up the notion that fragmented sys-
tems may be equally or even more efficient
than linear, vertically integrated ones, and
that the choice of mass production as the
proper trajectory of industrialization was
due more to historical contingencies and
ideological stances than to an actual lack of
viable alternatives. Because of this, they pre-
dicted that the crisis of Fordism under way
since the early seventies would result in the
revival of craft (i.e., carriage) economy and
the possible emergence of a new production
paradigm: flexible specialization. The orga-
nizational settings of this form of produc-
tion would resemble the economic
coordination and social integration of the
old nineteenth-century industrial districts
they had studied: groups of separate special-
ized units, each contributing to one aspect
of the product, engaged in intense direct
communication and embedded in a dense
social network. Although coming together
on a project basis, these units would have
strong ties in place, grown o u t of the
complementarity of their functions and the
market advantages that productive coopera-
tion would bring to all of them."
Flexible specialization offers an op-
portunity to rethink, or revitalize, the rela-
tionship between (building) design and
production while highlighting the impor-
tant aspects of the process of restructuring
briefly outlined.
In dealing with patterns of decentrali-
zation that are similar to those described for
design practice, the literature on network
organizations makes it clear that producing
by the carriage method can indeed be re-
warding: Structures of production that
make extensive use of subcontracting prac-
tices, skilled labor, and dedicated machinery
and that balance interfirm cooperation with
market competition cannot only alleviate
the risks associated with unstable markets,
but also outperform larger competitors by
responding more quickly to market changes
and adapting to, or adopting, technological
innovation.'* O n the other hand, the dis-
cussion emphasizes that the efficient use of
resources is linked to the type of relations in
place between network participants. Ad-
vanced levels of product design and techno-
logical flexibility can be reached because of
the enhanced ability of these systems to ac-
quire, store, use, and exchange design
knowledge. The dissemination of the latter
across the network makes almost every actor
part of the design domain while enabling
specialization of expertise. O n one side, this
shortens the gap between conception and
execution; on the other side, a quasi-firm
environment allows design cooperation to
be pursued from the early stages of the pro-
duction process, when mutual adjustments
between different tasks or problems are pos-
sible.13 Network-based production, then,
hinges on the possibility of achieving hori-
zontal coordination, ensuring cooperation,
and bypassing or reducing bureaucracy.
Steadfast information transactional activity
and the predominance of trust relations are
9. Fordisrn and post-Fordism: the changing face of production. (Philip Cooke, Back to the Future
key to this system. This means, though, that [London: Unwin Hyrnan, 19901, p. 155.)
fragmentation is not enough to ensure the
adequate functioning of networks: For the
system to reap the benefits of decentralized is interpreted and recomposed by contracts. Contractual profiles, established informa-
knowledge, a specific set of operating con- The analogy between building design and tion chains, and liability policies favor ver-
ditions must be in place. flexible specialization systems must then be tical flows, compartmentalization of
This raises a problem with design verified at the level of contractual structures. responsibilities, and market competition in
practice. In the building project, communi- In building, these structures do not ad- selecting subcontractors. Formal network
cation patterns are regulated to a large ex- equately acknowledge the flexible specializa- cooperation is achieved only in particular
tent by contractual stipulations. Work tion of design, being based, as they are, on projects, where program or occasion make it
interaction does not (naturally) depend on the idea of the needle. By and large, the cur- possible for these barriers to be overcome.
the distribution of expertise across the in- rent apparatus of work hinders the ability to This helps us understand that the dis-
dustry per se, but on how this distribution thoroughly exploit horizontal linkages. cussion on design cannot be developed in

139 Tornbesi

soecialist contractor
10 The building process as a network of design and coordination activities (Adapted from Colin
Gray, Will Hughes, and John Bennett, The Successful Management of Design [University of
Reading Center for Strategic Studies in Construction, 19941, p 24 )
the abstract. It must concern concrete con-
ditions of practice that include the coordi-
nation and tendering of trade work, the
selection of the project team, the acknowl-
edgment of participants’ roles, and the allo-
cation of official responsibilities in relation
to actual decision making.
The literature on flexible specializa-
tion also clarifies that decentralized environ-
ments define authority and power in precise
ways. While showing that each activity is
essential to the overall output of the system,
network production analysts have suggested
that what really matters in defining the re-
lations of power inside the project is the
value of the contribution provided by each
participant. This value has been related to
two factors: position in the network (i.e.,
the ability to coordinate the work of others)
and rarity of the service, in turn a function
of the amount of knowledge embedded in it
(i.e., the degree of spe~ialization).’~
The application of a flexible special-
ization perspective to the dynamics of the
building project suggests that the architect’s
February I999 JAE 52/3
gesian omanisation
traditional, generalist role may indeed sepa-
rate and evolve along two directions: (1) to
coordinate, define, and manage the design
interface or (2) to perform highly special-
ized work. In the first case, the core conno-
tation of the work would shift from the
detailed design of the building to the de-
tailed design of the project. The centrality
of the architectis function would depend on
the qualitative ability to blend various func-
tional designs together rather than perform-
ing a quantitatively central but operatively
weak task. In the second case, specialization
(i.e., the definition of independent design
niches at work on specific aspects of build-
ing procurement) would provide a way to
offset the objective decrease of design pro-
duction duties in the coordinating firm
while creating a real infrastructure for con-
current work and augmenting architects’
collective say across the project’s landscape.
If we accept this hypothesis, then the
important issue confronting today’s archi-
tecture profession is not the extension of the
design structure (or the release of several re-
1 40
sponsibilities to other parties), but what the
architect does within this structure. At the
same time, however, the idea that one can
discriminate between design duties in light
of their coordination content or goals sug-
gests a way to steer the professional-nonpro-
fessional distinction away from the
seemingly obsolete line that separates design
from construction activities: Contractors
could be considered those who provide de-
sign products for which they define internal
characteristics; professionals, by contrast,
those who, while providing similar prod-
ucts, also plan and supervise their external
webs of connections.
Flexible specialization has raised
heated debate at another level, concerned
with the impact of networks over character-
istics of labor and employment. The frag-
mentation of production into autonomous
units has been found to spawn uneven situ-
ations: on one side, pockets of highly quali-
fied labor, functioning almost as guilds and
usually characterized by high amounts of
knowledge embedded in the work; on the
other side, units of production with a sharp
internal distinction between “core” and “pe-
riphery” functions, permanent and tempo-
rary employment. This second situation
seems to occur when a specific “craft” is lack-
ing, and the subdivision of the overall pro-
cess among many participants reduces the
possible articulation of responsibilities inside
the unit: When interfirm network coordina-
tion is engineered and controlled by the vari-
ous cores, the execution part does not need
high levels of professional qualification.
Therefore, it can be managed by a profes-
sionally unskilled but technically proficient
workforce whose best attributes are availabil-
ity, replaceability, and low wage 1e~els.l~
This labor perspective suggests that it
may be useful to consider even for architec-
tural firms how the subdivision of design
knowledge affects the nature of the work
performed inside the office and, by exten-
sion, the structure of the employment.
A redistribution of professional em-
ployment has been under way for several
years.“ The externalization of tasks from the
architect to other parties has resulted in the
transfer of some professional labor over to
specialized firms and subcontractors. These
occupational dynamics may indeed have an
impact on design patterns. As a matter of
fact, the design development stage-the
central task, the core of the design process-
shows signs of restructuring, or dividing be-
tween schematic design and construction
drawings.” It is not difficult, for instance, to
find empirical evidence of the reduction of
the design-development component man-
aged by the architect vis-A-vis the expansion
of the work assigned to specialists.
In the cases where this happens, the
composition of labor in the architectural
firm seems to follow a generalizable pattern.
Value-adding knowledge (design and con-
struction experience, decision-making abili-
ties, or project coordination) tends to
concentrate with the work of a few, leaving
the production effort to a comparatively
larger portion of support staff with lesser
skills and job stability. Employment polar-
ization, that is, goes along with the steady,
structural presence of temporary staff (usu-
ally composed of fresh graduates periodi-
cally recycled), whose duties vary with the
type of the firm: computer drafting, model
making, or design rendering.
The problem with architectural firms
is not so much about earning levels, since
unpaid, sometimes long, apprenticeship is a
traditional component of architectural edu-
cation. It is not about seasonality either,
since architectural iobs have alwavs been
characterized by self-employment and high
mobility. It is about the fact that the oppo-
sition core-periphery inside the firm may
very well undermine the traditional layering
of the architectural office, which is what al-
lowed professional growth. It may become
difficult, within these firms, to reach levels
of responsibility by taking the inside track
because the linkage between clerical (i.e., ex-
ecution) and professional (i.e., concep-
tion) work-no matter how advanced the
clerical equipment-is almost severed by
reducing the central component of the de-
sign service (and process). Paradoxically,
subcontractors’ structures may provide
young graduates with better opportunities
to build professional profiles that will later
make them appealing to architectural firms.
With interface and coordination capacities
as possible strengths of the architectural
firm, the technical tier of responsibilities
just below the project managing team is in-
creasingly occupied by individuals with ar-
chitectural background b u t updated
industry experience, who maintain the con-
tacts with and between trade specialists,
production firms, and subcontractors.
In the end, the application of a flex-
ible specialization framework to design
clarifies that the main problem facing pro-
fessional practice in light of the spread of
technical expertise is not losing control over
the design process but adjusting to the
modifications this may bring about. The
idea of a central coordinating function for
the architect is enticing and feasible, but it
has to move along with the redefinition and
recognition of many design subtasks as in-
dependent, industrial designlike niches that
retain professional connotation in light of
the nature of the work they require and that
are likely to become points of agglomera-
tion for architectural employment.
The passage from needles to carriages
entails the collaboration of institutional
frameworks, the profession, and academia.
The first must create a contractual environ-
ment that facilitates professional interaction
within design networks; the second is re-
141 Tombesi
sponsible for taking the problem of intellec-
tual labor into account when setting up of-
fice management and employment strategies.
However, it is the third component-
academia-which needs to facilitate the cul-
tural acceptance of a model in which
architects may find themselves in a position
to design not only buildings but also build-
ing parts, not only spaces but also fabrication
processes, materials-handling procedures,
and information structures. Implementing
this agenda requires adjusting curricula, de-
vising teaching strategies that can expand the
idea of design, revise its myths, instill a bet-
ter understanding ofwhat it means and what
it is made of, and explain its changing geog-
raphy across the land of building. This might
involve opening epistemological questions;
revealing design’s social heterogeneity; exam-
ining how this evolved along the history of
building; and presenting construction and
other not strictly architectural enterprises as
legitimate developments of one’s profes-
sional career as an architect. The culture of
infiltration proposed here is not meant to
undermine architecture’s sense or cultural
value; its objective is to make building a
branch of architecture rather than architec-
ture a privileged subset of building.
Notes
1. The debate around the organization of pro-
duction processes developed in eighteenth-century
Europe alongside the rise of the factory system. For
almost one hundred years, the literature-Adam
Ferguson, Adam Smith, Charles Babbage, Andrew
Ure-addressed the various aspects (social, economic,
technical, and physical) of the problem separately.
Karl Marx was the first social theorist who, building
on the work preceding his own, came up with an or-
ganic critique of production that linked techniques,
machinery, labor and productivi~~
StruCtureS~
and capital accumulation.
2. Karl Marx, “Division of Labour and Manu-
facture,3.in capital: A Critigur of Economy
(New York: Modern Library, 1936).
 3. Jean-Rodolphe Perronet’s analyses were
eventually organized in a book; Remarques ri IXrt de
IEpinglier (Paris, 1762). For a discussion of the sub-
ject, see Antoine Picon, L ’Invention de I’IngPnieur
Moderne (Paris: Presse de I’Ecole Nationale des Ponts
et Chausskes, 1992).
4. Ford’s name was used to sum up a cultural
paradigm based on mass production, mass consump-
tion, assembly lines, and standardized products, which
started to regulate the organization of production in
capitalist economies by the first quarter of this century.
This paradigm is normally associated with the full in-
troduction of a series of innovations in manufacturing,
such as the assembly line and the scientific manage-
ment of the workforce, but-as Antonio Gramsci was
already noting in his notebook, Americanismo e
Fordismo [ 19341 (Turin: Einaudi, 1975)-the organi-
zation of production was only one part of this ideology.
Fordism implied a multilevel set of social and economic
norms, ranging from labor processes to wage systems,
from regimes of accumulation to institutional regula-
tions, from market competition to consumption behav-
iors, that had all to be satisfied if the system was to
prove fully effective. By identifying firms’ competitive
advantages with internal economies of scale, and with
the ability to control all the phases of the accumulation
process, Fordism planted the seeds for an industrial
landscape characterized by big plants and vertically in-
tegrated, tendentially monopolistic systems of produc-
tion, owned and run by large corporations. Such a
landscape started to reach full blossom by the late for-
ties, when the Fordist skeleton supported the surge in
commodities’ demand that followed the end of World
War 11. During this period, “large corporations were
able to stabilize markets and product designs, and to in-
stitute technologically-unified systems of mass-produc-
tion that largely internalized the division of labor”
(Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial
Divide (New York: Basic Books, 1984). The apparently
overwhelming progression of this “engine of growth”
generated a view of development, recorded in the writ-
ings of Alfred Chandler, John Kenneth Galbraith, and
Joseph Schumpeter, that considered the path from
small to large, and from many to one, the natural evo-
lution of an industry “propelled by the imperatives of
scale and technological advance.” (Michael Storper and
Richard Walker, The Capitalist Imperative (Oxford
and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989.)
5. In the sixties, Welton Becket and Associates
was one of the largest architectural firms in the United
States, with more than five hundred employees. In con-
structing its public image, the office emphasized the
similarities between its internal design procedures and
automobile assembly-line processes. See William Hunt,
Total Design: Architecture of Welton Becket andiissociatej
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974). Perronet and Becket
are only two examples of a broader cultural stance that
can be clearly detected in the discussion in the U.S. ar-
chitecture professional journals following World War I.
6. For a detailed analysis of this aspect, see
Paul Bentel, “Idealism and Enterprise: Modernism
and Professionalism in American Architecture, 1919-
1933” (Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology [MIT], Architecture, 1992).
7. I am borrowing these observations from the
analysis of the conceptual structure of the building
project undertaken by Roberto Pierroforre in his
“Communication and Use of Design Information in
the Building Delivery Process” (Ph.D. diss. M I T ,
Civil Engineering, 1992). Several commentaries-for
example, Omer Akin, Psycholog of Architectural De-
sign (London: Dion, 1986) and Bryan Lawson, How
Designers Think (Oxford and New York: Architectural
Press, 1980)-insist that the classification of design
services contained in documents like The Architert’s
Handbook of ProfPssionalPractice is only a convention
that provides “an accurate account of what needs to be
done by the architect” but “does not imply a linear
design process” (Akin, p. 58). Regardless of the origi-
nal intention, the contractual organization of the pro-
cess has in fact become-as Pietroforte and others
show-the accepted standard for organizing a n d
monitoring design work in the building industry.
8. See Mark Swenarton, Artisans and Arcbi-
tects: The Rwkinian Tradition in Architectural Thought
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989); and Susan Pied-
mont-Palladino and Alden Branch, Devil’s Workshop:
25 Years of Jersey Devil Architecture (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1997).
9. As Allen Scott explains, “Commodity produc-
tion comprises a system of labor processes in which
workers manipulate tools and equipment so as to bring
forth sellable outputs. . . , This definition of commod-
ity production depends in no way on the physical form
or character of outputs, but only on the specific social re-
lations that govern their production. By this definition,
therefore, such intangibles as information, news, and
advice are commodities, just as raw materials and manu-
factured outputs are.” Allen Scott, Metropolis: From the
Division of Labor to Urban Form (Berkeley and Los An-
geles: University of California Press, 1988), p. 26.
10. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Sec-
February 1999 JAE 52/3 142
ond Industrial Divide: Possibilitiesfor Prosperity (New
York: Basic Books, 1984).
11. Alfred Marshall developed the notion of the
industrial district at the end of the last century. Marshall
used the term industrialdistrict to indicate specific geo-
graphic areas, specialized in the production of particu-
lar goods and Characterized by networks of firms, which
were able to remain at the forefront of their own tech-
nologies without consolidating the fragmented structure
of the sector. See: Alfred Marshall, Elements ofEconom-
ics ofIndushy (New York: Macmillan, 1900).
12. T h e examples used by Piore and Sabel
ranged from computer systems in Silicon Valley to
precision components in Germany, from ceramic tiles
to fashion garments in Italy.
13. In industrial literature, a quasi firm” is de-
fined when the relationships governing the activities of
a group of legally autonomous economic units repro-
duce the hierarchies at work within bureaucratic struc-
tures (i.e., firms). These hierarchies imply t h e
acknowledgment of coordinating entities, the accep-
tance of an information structure that conditions the
work of all of the participants, and the use of coopera-
tion mechanisms above and beyond those specified by
contractual relationships.
14. See Michael Storper a n d Bennett
Harrison, “Flexibility, Hierarchy, and Regional Devel-
opment: T h e Changing Structure of Industrial Pro-
duction Systems and Their Forms of Governance in
the 1990s,” Research Policy 2 0 (1991): 407-22; and
Michael Piore, “Technological Trajectories and the
Classical Revival in Economics,” in: Michael Storper
and Allen Scott, eds., Pathways to Industrialization and
Regional Development (London: Routledge, 1992).
15. See Anna Pollert, ed., Farewell to Flexibil-
ity?(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
16. Since the late seventies, the ProfessionalSer-
vices Management Journal has repeatedly stressed the
advantages of specializing, staying lean, and contracting
out for design services, supporting this position with
data from the journal’s Financial Statistics Surveys. The
1994 document shows that specialty consulting (“engi-
neering sub”) outruns architectural services under all
economic indicators-for example, operating profit,
overhead rate, staff growth-and that, among architec-
tural firms, medium to small firms (employing 16 to 25
people) perform better than their competitors.
17. David Haviland comes to the same conclu-
sion in “Current Shifts and Dislocations in the Design
and Procurement of Buildings” (unpublished manu-
script, 1990).