Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice ed. by Zeynep Çelik Alexander and John May

Abstract

Reviewed by: Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice ed. by Zeynep Çelik Alexander and John May Giorgio Marfella (bio) Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice Edited by Zeynep Çelik Alexander and John May. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Pp. 262. Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice Edited by Zeynep Çelik Alexander and John May. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Pp. 262. The discipline of architecture is tormented by a perennial concern: the theoretical explanation of the role of tools in professional practice. The latest iteration is the obsession with digital practice and its associated apparatus of seductive jargon, software, and algorithms. Design Technics is a collection of seven essays that seeks new answers beyond these fascinations. Questioning and engaging with the mantra of the digital, this collection unearths the old relationship of architecture with techne, the ancient Greek word that best uncovers the root of this ongoing problem. The existing scholarship on this complicated relationship is abundant and overbearing. Architectural historians and critics have confronted the endless facets of the "technical" problem of architecture in many ways. By and large, positions have settled in camps denoted by a few recurrent derivations of techne, which often morph into the ambiguous terms of architectural "techniques," "technology," "tectonics," or "technics." This collection settles on "technics," suggesting lineage with Lewis Mumford (Art and Technics, 1952), but missing—or perhaps avoiding—engagement with the precedent of Cecile Elliott's technological history of architecture vis-a-vis the manufacturing of building materials (Technics and Architecture, 1992). Here the term technics signifies the dialectic between architects and their design tools and instruments. This interpretation eludes the physical products of the built environment, as well as the usual means of representation of architectural ideas. The approach is erudite, departing from the traditional spheres of architectural techniques, technology, and tectonics. The intent is however contradicted by the front cover, which shows two hands holding a compass on a drafting table. The instruments of concern here are not the conventional documenting tools of the profession (whether artisanal, analogue, or digital), but the behavioral scaffolds that frame day-to-day activities often taken for granted in architectural schools and studios. The unifying theme of the book is clear from the titles of its essays, each one identified by a gerund: "Rendering," "Modeling," "Scanning," "Equipping," "Specifying," "Positioning," and "Repeating." These gerunds acknowledge the inevitable software-driven pursuits of contemporary designers. The titles are well-chosen, but the book's subtitle may leave many architects perplexed, once the subject of most essays become clear. Except for the professional act of specifying, which Michael Osman uses to remind us about the clerical essence of architectural services, readers [End Page 630] will find more academic theory than architectural practice in Design Technics. Nonetheless, Osman's essay is likely to intrigue beyond architectural academia for showing the "never standard" history of timber balloon framing, through which he convincingly dismantles the 'revolutionary' pretenses of digital mass-customization. While Lucia Allais's essay on the experiential tradition of "rendering" and John Harwood's reissue of John Ruskin's idea of the "architecture of position" fall more in traditional discourses of architectural theory, other contributions are less directly pertinent to the discipline. This is by no means a criticism, but rather a bonus, as several essays will likely appeal more to historians of technology than to architects. Some readers of this journal may be thrilled to dive into Çelik Alexander's essay on the development of the earliest reading machines, the precursors of digital scanners, and the transition from the analogue parallel processing methods of the 1930s to the more reliable and somewhat human discretizing image-recognition means developed in the 1950s. Others may appreciate the significance of the experimental bio-scientific modeling powers brought by the repressilator as expounded by Matthew Hunter or gain a different view on cybernetics from Orit Halpern's journey on the technology transfer between communication network theories and psychoanalysis. Some readers may even find amused delight through Edward Eigen's essay on the eccentric human-comforting ambitions of the automata, devised by watchmaker-illusionist Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin for his French bourgeois residence. The overarching message of Design Technics is heterogeneous...