Into the Hidden Abode: Architecture, Production, Process

Abstract

Architecture’s recent turn towards production and process raises questions about the location of production, beyond the construction site and the factory, and including, for example, the design process, regulation, and the production of building materials, temporary places, and images. But this turn, by necessarily engaging with techniques through which production is recorded, made visible and conceived, cannot supersede “aesthetics and representation.” With reference to Harun Farocki’s film documentary studying brick-making around the world, In Comparison (2009), this paper examines the inherent problems of making production (and labor) visible, exploring diagrammatic, filmic, performative, and textual techniques that attempt this and asks what their potentials may be.