Introduction to the TF/TK Project
As enslavement and deaths at building sites make international headlines, and the deskilling, precarization and forced migration of construction workers increases across the globe (Dainty & Loosemore, 2012), we are at the same time witnessing a growing distance – literal and legal - between architects and the sites of production for their designs. Moreover, the supposedly creative labour of architects is itself ever more divided, commodified and outsourced. There is, therefore, an urgent need to advance the critical understanding of relations between architectural design and the production and labour of building, whilst recognising that in many parts of the world building takes place through self-organised processes (Neuwirth, 2005; McGuirk, 2014) and that technological innovation still depends on traditional skills (Heine & Rauhut, 2017).
This project responds by bringing together architectural historians and theorists, producers of formal and informal built environments and other relevant scholars to collate, structure and apply a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary field we are calling Production Studies.
Led by an Anglo/Brazilian team of 2PIs and 4CoIs – all leading researchers of production who have already worked together on successful related projects - with a team of 16 expert Affiliated Researchers, TF/TK will provide a framework for PS. To do so, we draw on the single most sustained and rigorous enquiry into art and design from the perspective of labour in any language – that of the still active Brazilian–French historian, theorist, and architect, Sérgio Ferro, who has explored production of art and architecture from the medieval period through to 20th century modernism. Key to our approach to PS is Ferro’s demonstration that the tendency of architectural discourse to ignore issues of labour and processes of construction (in favour of new technologies, use, aesthetics, symbolism etc.) is no mere oversight but rather a structural necessity to the maintenance of the profession’s capacity to act ‘over’ the building site in the service of capital. Through working with producers of the built environment in order to co-produce and transform knowledge of relationships between design and construction labour, TF/TK seeks not only to understand and critically evaluate these mechanisms, but also to identify existing and possible forms of production, in which building processes – in themselves and not just for their products – can become catalysts for social change, in which the social and material production of space engenders autonomy, equality, justice, creativity and joy.
Research Questions or Problems:
This research aims to draw on Sérgio Ferro’s unique body of work to consolidate a cross- disciplinary, cross-cultural field of Production Studies, in order to understand and interrogate design and construction across cultural contexts, and provide conceptual and political support for alternative models and agencies, by asking:
Which theories, research methods and experiences have been developed that; critically address conditions and division of labour in architecture and building construction under capitalism; explore their social, economic and environmental consequences; and identify or help develop alternative models?
Drawing on Ferro’s unique enquiry into the relations of design and production in art and architecture, how and to what extent can we:
- Mobilise its cross-disciplinary approaches across building cultures to structure these theories, methods and experiences as a shared field of PS in which existing and forthcoming research and action can be articulated?
- Learn from and translate its existing impacts in Portuguese and French speaking contexts, for researchers in architectural production; for architectural education; and for those supporting alternative forms of social relations through building.
How can cross-cultural exchange and the experiences of builders, designers and academics be used to produce knowledge and transform awareness of labour process and social relations in production enabling the valuing and creation of alternative practices?
How can a structured cross-disciplinary and methodological framework of PS be applied to concrete contexts and situations within academic disciplines, including architectural history and related subject areas such as anthropology, art history, political economy; and within practice, including design pedagogy and grassroots movements?
Research Context:
TF/TK is a much needed response to a contemporary crisis in today’s building industry where design, construction and materials manufacture are ever more globally dispersed (Kieran & Timberlake, 2003), in which conditions for construction workers are worsening (CIOB, 2015) although their skills and self-organisation sustain both formal and informal building sectors (Heine & Rauhut, 2017; Davis, 2005; Neuwirth, 2005; McGuirk, 2014). Architectural discourse is beginning to be concerned with these issues (Harvard Design Magazine 46, special issue 'No Sweat', 2018; various Architecture and Labour symposia in 2015, 2016, 2018; the formation of campaign groups, e.g. in the US the Architecture Lobby; in the UK Architectural Workers) but its efforts are impeded by the fact that questions concerning labour are actively excluded from architects’ professional remit (Deamer, 2015; Tonkiss, 2017), and architects are at the same time increasingly removed from the realisation of their designs (Deamer & Bernstein, 2010). Debate, criticism and scholarship are increasingly concerned with the socio-economic factors that inform architecture’s development (governmentality, regulation, finance, insurance and risk, contractual organisation and techniques of practice), as shown by many journal special issues, papers, books and symposia (e.g. Perspecta 47 ‘Money’, 2014; Awan, Schneider & Till, 2011; Aggregate Architectural History Collective, 2012; Lopes & Lira, 2013; Lloyd Thomas, Amhoff & Beech, 2015) Research groups, laboratories, centres and institutes (such as ProBe, CLR, Habis, MOM) and non-academic organisations (such as Engineers Against Poverty, The Chartered Institute of Building, Architectes Sans Frontières, Architecture & Développement) are producing knowledge, seeking ways against, around, or out of the contradictions of building production.
In this context Sérgio Ferro’s original and coherent body of scholarship offers the potential to provide a framework for understanding and transforming architecture’s separation of design and construction, and is of far greater significance than has yet been recognised. In more than half a century of collaborative research, teaching, wide ranging reading and prolific writings, and in in practice with Arquitetura Nova, Ferro has developed a body of work that can both provide a common theoretical and methodological ground for the field of production studies, and direct it towards social action, as his influence upon a number of Brazil-based architects demonstrates, in providing technical advice to grassroots movements and communities in self-managed building production (such as Usina, a collective of architects, planners, engineers, sociologists co-founded by João Marcos de Almeida Lopes in 1990). Ferro’s sustained focus on labour and his deep empirical engagement with historical material processes (in contrast, for example, with Tafuri’s scrutiny of the figure of the architect and the avant-garde) offers a rigorous framework through which architecture in capitalist production can be understood and critiqued, making a substantial contribution to existing research, from William Morris to architect Hannes Meyer’s co-operative projects in 1920s Switzerland, or the international gatherings of researchers in the Production of the Built Environment at the Bartlett International Summer Schools (1979-1992). Most of Ferro’s work has appeared only in his native Portuguese or in French, making its translation into English a vital first step, as shown by intense international interest in our translation of Ferro’s ‘Concrete as Weapon’ in Harvard Design Magazine 46 (2018) and its launch at Central St Martins in London, March 2019, and by Bloomsbury’s interest in publishing Ferro’s texts.
Theoretically and methodically, this project's relevance derives from the fact that concepts and procedures mobilised by enquiries on production in architecture, come from many areas of knowledge (eg. literature, system theory, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, ergonomics, economics, organisation studies), are often quite distant from their subjects and each other, making it difficult to bring discrete pieces of research into a wider cross-disciplinary picture. Geographically, this project raises questions that have global reach, but also demands awareness of often radically diverse local production contexts. Local practices are determined by multiple factors, from environmental conditions, political systems, and geopolitical roles, to technological development, social and economic inequality, building traditions and labour organisation. Ferro’s scholarship and ideas are themselves informed by translations of concepts across cultures of building. They first gained momentum in Brazil in the 1950s, but they were developed in a European context. Understanding singularities and commonalities is the aim of the project's Case Studies delivered by the core team and 16 ARs from Brazil, UK, US and France. Opportunities for exchange in the project will allow for learning across disciplines and contexts, and enable the project to tackle directly the translation of methods and concepts in PS.
Research Methods:
TF/TK comprises three key research activities - collating (WP1), structuring (WP2) and applying WP3 & 4) - which overlap but develop sequentially over the time period of the project [see work plan]. Collating (WP1) involves the identification, gathering, organising and dissemination of the networks, resources, methods, knowledge and experiences that can contribute to PS, and a stakeholder analysis in preparation for WP3 & 4 [RQ1]. Structuring (WP2) develops and builds a framework through which these elements can be systematically articulated, and draws in particular on the unique body of research developed by Ferro since the 1960s, through a series of close readings, debates and scholarly responses by the core team [RQ2i] with particular attention to the areas where it has already had considerable impact – architectural history and theory, interdisciplinary research, pedagogy and grassroots movements [RQ2ii]. Finally, applying the findings (WP3 & 4) makes use of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural exchange with a wider network of stakeholders identified through WP1 to co-produce new knowledge for PS and transform awareness of building production in academic and practice-based arenas [RQ3].
In WP3 & 4 the core team and 16 Affiliated Researchers draw on methods and themes identified through WP2 to conduct 24 new exemplar Case Studies (CS) sited in the UK and Brazil, but also in France, Switzerland, Yugoslavia and China, which explore and test the theories, methods and practical implications of this framework to mobilise PS as a discipline [RQ4].
Making Ferro’s work a catalyst for PS inflects the methodological direction and scope of this research in some key ways. Following the interdisciplinary nature of Ferro’s methods and resources brings to light the cross-disciplinary reach of Production Studies’ methods and findings. Moreover, translating this body of research is more than a matter of transcribing Portuguese and/or French into English; it takes a body of work which emerged out of a local production context and asks to what extent its theories are transposable to other building cultures; what differences and what commonalities are revealed. Thus, TF/TK has assembled a cross- disciplinary team of researchers from Brazil (and France) where Ferro’s work originated, and from English speaking contexts (UK and US) to debate the methods, findings and implications of this newly-available body of work, through a 3.5 year programme of cross-cultural exchange, with events and meetings scheduled in both São Paulo and the UK in each year of the project.
In order to resist reproducing the privileging of architects over builders that Ferro identifies in his analyses, we strive for knowledge in PS to come from producers in formal and informal sectors, as well as from design practitioners and academics. And taking up Ferro’s aim for social change and the possibility of free work through building, we ask how this new knowledge can be brought into pedagogy and, and how it can support the work of alternatives that challenge the hegemonic models in the production of human environments. To achieve the core team has identified and will support case studies from ARs involved with education of future architects and designers (e.g. Spatial Practices, Central St Martins; Practice-based MArch, Newcastle University) and from grassroots movements (e.g. Usina, Peabiru, Dwellbeing). Website launch events (autumn 2022) and workshops introducing and debating Ferro’s work (autumn 2021) will engage with schools of architecture, professional institutions and grassroots organisations, with
a view to identifying new project audiences and extending networks for Production Studies.
WP1 Collating, led by São Paulo (SP) based CoI Dr Pedro Fiori Arantes, begins in the first month of the project with the core team meeting (WM1) in São Paulo to set out the scope and map the field of PS, beginning building a database of research resources, bibliography, interviews and networks. In August the team will meet with the web designer and development team at NU to finalise the website design (WM2) and upload launch content. The TF/TK website (OP1a) will go live in Oct 2020, with a series of 6 small local launch events across practice, education and social movements, each led by members of the core team (e.g. in São Paulo at FAU-SP, IAB-SP, in the UK at Newcastle University, RIBA North East), and others organized by project partners (e.g. The Building Centre, CSM, CGG, University of Grenoble) raising awareness of the project and enable the core team to reach new stakeholders for WP3 & 4. We have already successfully tested this approach at the launch of our translation of Ferro’s ‘Concrete as Weapon’ in London, Mar 2019. Reading groups, an evening screening of Usina’s film In Between (2016, 40 mins) and a talk on Ferro’s work attracted around 80 participants - some of whom are now involved as ARs or project partners. The core team will continue to
collate, categorize and survey of resources as basis for PS throughout the project, with new findings, translations, publications (WP2) and exemplar case studies (WP3 & 4) added to the website as they develop. The full website will be showcased at the PS International Conference in Newcastle, 2023 and used as a basis for follow-on funding applications to further develop PS.
WP2 Structuring, led by International CoI Dr Silke Kapp, takes Ferro’s work as a framework to set out the interdisciplinary reach, resources, exemplar case studies and methods for a field of production studies that has social justice and change as its aim. The translation into English of key works of Ferro – an edited Anthology of his shorter essays (OP2) and two monographs (OP3; OP4 a, b, c) – together with research into the scholarship and sources used by Ferro will take place through 2020-21 (for details see Dissemination). Dr Kapp has already led specialist work on our previous translations, and will work closely with Ferro and the translation team. As texts are translated they will be disseminated to the core team, ARs and to other stakeholders identified through WP1 for close-reading and debate, forming the focus of two symposia in 2021, on the significance of interdisciplinarity for Ferro and PS (hosted by partners, William Morris Museum, UK; Feb 2021) and on methods used by Ferro and other PS researchers (Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, São Paulo, Brazil; Aug 2021). Responses by the TF/TK core team will be collected in a special issue (OP5) of Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge University Press) – an academic journal which seeks to link research and practice – and will be used to lay out methodological and interdisciplinary frameworks for applying insights from Ferro’s work in the exemplar case study research. At this point, in autumn 2021 the core team and project partners will host 8 workshops (in Brazil and in the UK, on each of the 4 case study themes) which double up as occasions for identifying further contributors to the Case Studies, thus folding impact into the process of research rather than seeing it as the endpoint. Events will include, for example in the UK, a workshop exchange on design pedagogy between our University of Grenoble partner and the new NU Practice-based MArch, and the production of a CPD seminar to be delivered by the UK PI and PdRA to architectural practices such as XSite, Faulkner Browns, Mawson Kerr (supported by our Project Partners RIBA North East) which introduces Ferro’s ideas and PS debates and elicits practitioners’ stories for website articles.
WP3 & 4 Applying the methods, disciplinary approaches and resources uncovered through WP1 and 2 will be conducted through 24 new PS Case Studies across four thematics - histories; social movements; (WP3 led by SPCoI Lira) pedagogies, disciplines beyond architecture; (WP4 led by UKCoI Davies) – selected because each of these constituencies has already drawn on aspects of Ferro’s work. These Case Studies (CS) are intended to test and mobilise PS methods and to provide a set of exemplar research projects for the discipline. In addition to the 16 ARs listed below (CS9-24), each core team member, including UK and SP PdRAs and PhD, will work on a Case Study (CS1-8). Progress will be reviewed at a key UK workshop (WM5) in spring 2022, attended by all ARs. Cases will be presented (and case sites visited) at the biannual Enanparq (national architectural research) conference in São Carlo, SP in Nov 2022, and at our international conference launch of Production Studies at NU, UK, (Apr 2023).