MArch Architectural Design

RC10: Architectural Production

Theory Reading List

In this Research Cluster we will problematise, reflect upon and critique architectural production,
with an emphasis on architectural design, production and assembly technologies. Technologies,
however, do not operate in a “void” and must be seen from different lenses – not purely technical,
but we must reflect on the broader design, social, environmental, or cultural impacts and
implications of our design decisions and theoretical directions. This might challenge some more
“scientific” approaches to design research following the tradition from theorists like Herbert
Simon (Ericsson and Simon 1980; Simon 1969), but we will expect you to explore broader areas
of research such as socio-technical theory (Bijker, Carlson, and Pinch 1997), innovation in the
margins and decolonisation (Tunstall 2013), supply chains and critical approaches to global
material flows (Sassen 2014), or the democratising effect of making and access to technology
(Ehn, Nilsson, and Topgaard 2014).

One area we will look into is material theories. Although not always “digital” (for a specific text
on digital materiality, see Leach, Turnbull, and Williams 2004), the study of the material world will
help you develop initial questions and insights, and frame your theory and design work within
established research territories. Some starting points for this might be socio-material and socio-
political approaches to material flows (De Landa 2000) and design. Socio-materiality is a relatively
recent theory, developed to help us understand the material cultures (Tilley et al. 2006) and flows
within social contexts such as organisations (Jarzabkowski and Pinch 2013; Leonardi and
Rodriguez-Lluesma 2012) or more broadly in everyday life (Tanggaard 2012). Information systems
have, also, social and material extensions (Cecez-Kecmanovic et al. 2014). An example of socio-
political approaches to material studies is the Fab City network, which poses the challenge of
devolving production back to citizens through localised production (Diez and Posada 2013). This
approach stems from the Fablab agenda (Gershenfeld 2012; Smith et al. 2013), but more
profoundly sees the city as a key driver for more relational, socially grounded and environmentally
responsive material flows and modes of production (Birtchnell and Urry 2013; Guallart 2020). This
has allowed for more open and distributed material practices, not always centred around
institutionalised wealth and capital power – see, for instance, projects on digital fabrication
associated to vernacular material systems (Veliz Reyes et al. 2019), historical sites and local craft
(Gonzalez Böhme, Quitral Zapata, and Maino Ansaldo 2017), or with isolated / disenfranchised
communities (Amescua Carrera and Ordóñez Grajales 2022).

Differently from material theories, your work will involve making things. Making, testing,
prototyping, modelling (making digitally) are key methods of design practice and research, and
you should be able to support that with appropriate theory and research underpins. Making has
been theorised from multiple critical perspectives (Ratto 2011), and some starting points might
include an anthropological outline of making (Ingold 2010, 2012), making in relation to expertise
and (digital) craft studies (Mccullough 1997), or making in relation to social contexts of innovation
and accessibility (Ehn, Nilsson, and Topgaard 2014; Niaros, Kostakis, and Drechsler 2017; Sanders
and Stappers 2014).

Last, you will be required to contextualise the above within your work and a focus on architectural
design and production. Here, several strands can contribute to your work and our discipline is a
fruitful source of theories and case studies. You might want to start looking at the work of Sarah
Pink or Martin Berg around automation and automated futures (Berg 2022; Pink et al. 2022), or
case studies such as AUAR’s work on automated housing using discrete elements (Claypool et al.
2021; Retsin 2016, 2019). Additional case studies will stem from your design work, and you can
address them from a theoretical and critical perspectives as the year progresses. In addition to
the above, you will be expected to grow and develop your own reading lists by searching and
engaging with literature, this document is only a starting point.

Below is the full reference list for this text. Please do not only read them, but keep an eye on
the journals and conferences where these papers are published. This will give you an
opportunity to further search and discover relevant literature for your work. Also, please note
how these references are included in the text – you will need to support your own texts with
literature when you start writing your own theory work.

Amescua Carrera, Jessica, and Mariana Ordóñez Grajales. 2022. Participation as pedagogy. The
Architectural Review.
Berg, Martin. 2022. "Digital technography: A methodology for interrogating emerging digital
technologies and their futures." Qualitative Inquiry 28 (7):827-836. doi:
10.1177/10778004221096851.
Bijker, Wiebe E., W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch. 1997. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs :
Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change: MIT Press.
Birtchnell, Thomas, and John Urry. 2013. "Fabricating futures and the movement of objects."
Mobilities 8 (3):388-405. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2012.745697.
Cecez-Kecmanovic, Dubravka, Robert D Galliers, Ola Henfridsson, Sue Newell, and Richard
Vidgen. 2014. "The sociomateriality of information systems: current status, future
directions." MIS Quarterly 38 (3: Special Issue "Sociomateriality of IS &
Organizing"):809-830. doi: 10.25300/MISQ/2014/38:3.3.
Claypool, Mollie, Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Clara Jaschke, and Kevin Saey. 2021.
"Automation and the discrete: Exploring new potentials for streamlining production in
architectural design research." Journal of Architectural Education 75 (1):108-114. doi:
10.1080/10464883.2021.1859893.
De Landa, Manuel. 2000. A thousand years of non-linear history: Zone Books.
Diez, Tomas, and Alex Posada. 2013. "The fab and the smart city: the use of machines and
technology for the city production by its citizens." TEI '13: Proceedings of the 7th
International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction, Barcelona,
Spain, February, 2013.
Ehn, Pelle, Elisabet M Nilsson, and Richard Topgaard, eds. 2014. Making Futures: Marginal notes
on innovation, design and democracy. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Ericsson, Anders, and Herbert Simon. 1980. "Verbal reports as data." Psychological Review 87
(3):215-251. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.87.3.215.
Gershenfeld, Neil. 2012. "How to make almost anything: The digital fabrication revolution."
Foreign Affairs 91 (6):43-57.
Gonzalez Böhme, Luis Felipe, Francisco Quitral Zapata, and Sandro Maino Ansaldo. 2017.
"Roboticus tignarius: robotic reproduction of traditional timber joints for the
reconstruction of the architectural heritage of Valparaíso." Construction Robotics 1
(1):61-68.
Guallart, Vicente. 2020. "From digital cities to biocities: Harnessing the power of the digital
revolution to reinvent the urban ecology model." Architectural Design 90 (3: Special
Issue "Urban Futures: Designing the Digitalised City"):72-75. doi: 10.1002/ad.2571.
Ingold, Tim. 2010. "The textility of making." Cambridge Journal of Economics 34 (1):91-102. doi:
10.1093/cje/bep042.
Ingold, Tim. 2012. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture: Routledge.
Jarzabkowski, Paula, and Trevor Pinch. 2013. "Sociomateriality is 'the new black': accomplishing
repurposing, reinscripting and repairing in context." Management 16 (5):579-592.
Leach, Neil, David Turnbull, and Chris Williams, eds. 2004. Digital Tectonics: Wiley Academy.
Leonardi, Paul M, and Carlos Rodriguez-Lluesma. 2012. "Sociomateriality as a lens for design:
Imbrication and the constitution of technology and organization." Scandinavian Journal
of Information Systems 24 (2):79-88.
Mccullough, Malcolm. 1997. Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand: MIT Press.
Niaros, Vasilis, Vasilis Kostakis, and Wolfgang Drechsler. 2017. "Making (in) the smart city: The
emergence of makerspaces." Telematics and Informatics 34 (7):1143-1152.
Pink, Sarah, Martin Berg, Deborah Lupton, and Minna Ruckenstein, eds. 2022. Everyday
Automation: Experiencing and Anticipating Emerging Technologies: Routledge.
Ratto, Matt. 2011. "Critical Making: Conceptual and material studies in technology and social
life." The Information Society 27:252-260.
Retsin, Gilles. 2016. "Discrete assembly and digital materials in architecture." eCAADe 2016
Conference "Complexity and Simplicity", Oulu, Finland, 24-26 August.
Retsin, Gilles. 2019. "Bits and Pieces: Digital Assemblies: From Craft to Automation."
Architectural Design 89 (2 (Special Issue: Discrete: Reappraising the Digital in
Architecture)):38-45.
Sanders, Elizabeth B. N., and Pieter Jan Stappers. 2014. "Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three
approaches to making in codesigning." CoDesign 10 (1: CoDesigning through making):5-
14. doi: 10.1080/15710882.2014.888183.
Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge
and London: Harvard University Press.
Simon, Herbert. 1969. The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Smith, Adrian, Sabine Hielscher, Sascha Dickel, Johan Soderberg, and Ellen van Oost. 2013.
Grassroots digital fabrication and makerspaces: reconfiguring, relocating and
recalibrating innovation? In SPRU Working Paper Series, edited by Tomasso Ciarli and
Daniele Rotolo: University of Sussex.
Tanggaard, Lene. 2012. "The sociomateriality of creativity in everyday life." Culture &
Psychology 19 (1):20-32. doi: 10.1177/1354067X12464987.
Tilley, Chris, Webb Keane, Susanne Kuechler, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, eds. 2006.
Handbook of Material Culture: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Tunstall, Elizabeth (Dori). 2013. "Decolonizing design innovation: Design anthropology, critical
anthropology, and indigenous knowledge." In Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice,
edited by Wendy Gunn, Ton Otto and Rachel Charlotte Smith, 232-250. London, New
York: Bloomsbury.
Veliz Reyes, Alejandro, Wassim Jabi, Mohamed Gomaa, Aikaterini Chatzivasileiadi, Lina Ahmed,
and Nicholas Wardhana. 2019. "Negotiated matter: A robotic exploration of craft-driven
innovation." Architectural Science Review 62 (5: Special Issue “Means, Methods,
Machines and Making in Architecture”):398-408. doi: 10.1080/00038628.2019.1651688.