Curious constructions: Around materials, labor, and the environment

Abstract

To be ‘curious’ suggests an eagerness to know or to learn while also implying a strangeness or unusual quality. In this way, ‘curious’ encompasses the many words we peruse in search of difference. In addition, it suggests a willingness for new knowledge, offering the possibility to produce change. If ‘curious’ borrows from terms of difference such as non-standard, novel, strange, and niche, it is coupled with ‘Constructions’ to ground the type of difference and curiosities that the paper exposes. The “constructions” that this paper seeks to highlight suggest a deliberate formation of parts, materials, words, or ideas that might inspire curiosity. Since curiosity cannot be measured, the paper intentionally does not attempt to formulate a set of metrics to quantify the types of difference deemed curious. In this way, the paper should not be thought of as a manual. Instead, the paper puts forward a theory of design that inspires a form of curiosity that gravitates around questions of materials, labor, and the environment as primary design drivers in the formation of buildings, promoting a conception of difference that does not emphasize a formal definition. The emergence of the digital project in architecture at the end of the last century, with its promise of formal liberation in computation's first digital turn, largely neglected materiality and its means of production, further separating design ambition from societal and environmental repercussions. The second digital turn is characterized by an effort to deploy digital tools in a more integrated and nuanced practice, that promotes the dialogue of the digital object and its physical, material artifacts. Through this shift in ideology, we can begin to address the lingering rift between design, material, and technology, not in pursuit of formal exuberance, but rather as a design driver. This change is only possible through a redirection of our disciplinary priorities, particularly how we choose to assign meaning to architects and works of architecture. The pursuit of difference through esoteric and self-referential formal experimentation is frequently prioritized at the expense of ecological impacts, the exploitation of underpaid laborers, and the overconsumption of scarce natural resources. This paper promotes a new framework informed by materials, labor, and the environment for the assignation of value in architecture. First, the paper defines the historical context that describes the transition from the notion of the master builder to the divorced disciplines of drawing and building. This history sets the groundwork for the contemporary condition which situates the digital project in architecture and the shift from the first to the second digital turn. Secondly, an analysis of this history helps situate a proposed framework by which to reconsider the impacts of how we build and what we prioritize in works of architecture. Finally, the paper uses case studies deemed ‘curious’ works of architecture to challenge our preconceptions and default systems of material deployment and construction standards to reframe the relationship between design and making. ‘Curious Constructions,’ in this sense, enable a more concerted effort to pursue difference in a more responsible way.