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Towards Embodied Knowledge in Architecture: Investigating the relation between traditional handcrafts and technological development

Part 1 Dissertation 2019
Tord Mardoff Nielsen
 University for the Creative Arts | UK
When we speak of architecture, we often imagine the built object or a beautiful drawing. This thesis instead turns to exploring the less acknowledged stage of architectural production: the very process of building and making construction decisions. Arguing that the building site plays a central role for both education and continuous innovation that the architectural discipline depends on. The study approaches the field of architectural production by analysing discourses surrounding building industrialisation, modular construction and skilled craftsmanship. It offers an understanding of culture as ordinary, produced by everyday interactions (after Raymond Williams), beyond and above the notion of ‘high culture’. Starting from the premise that traditional skillset is not antithetical to technological development in architecture, the thesis engages with the author’s personal background in joinery, using work diaries and oral history to explore the less–documented process of education in craft and design as ‘learning through making’ (after Tim Ingold). This methodological tool is further used to question how the official narratives often neglect the architectural knowledge produced collaboratively, on site, which, the dissertation argues, is dependent on both workers’ skillsets and resolution of ambiguities that the dialogical work on site lends itself to.
Tord Mardoff Nielsen
Tutor(s)
Tijana Stevanovic
2019
Figure 01. Overlaying movement, 1 minute of movement, a picture every 5th second. (By the author, 2018)
Figure 02. André J. Roubo’s illustrations of the human eye and hand as essential tools. (Roubo, 1769)
Figure 03. Modes of cultural transmission: the general views on how we relay our culture from one generation to the next. (Cavalli-Sforza, 1986)
Figure 04. André J. Roubo’s illustrations of a how to read and understand timber. (Roubo, 1769)
Figure 05. André J. Roubo’s illustrations of detailed joints. (Roubo, 1769)
Figure 06. Remains of a school in Vadsø, Norway. Disaster as a catalyst for innovation. (Unknown, 1944)
Figure 07. Building a timber frame for a Norwegian ‘recreation house’. (Hoeel, Norwegian folk museum)
Figure 08. Corded power drill as a symbol of innovation, and the joining of traditional handcrafts and technological innovation. (C.H. Hayward, 1952)
Figure 09. Showing the overlap between drawings as a discussion forum, to the made component, in the making of a 4m long dovetail joint. (By the author, 2018)
Figure 10. Applying architectural theory; the project this section is from set as an aim to discuss the application of ‘the science of handcraft’ in both the program of the built environment as well as in the execution of the drawings, by embedding sketch
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