Industries of Architecture

At a time when the production of architecture is undergoing significant change, Industries of Architecture makes central to the architectural humanities issues such as industrialisation, the labour and processes of building and design, economy, regulation, techniques of fabrication and management. Turning to historical and theoretical questions, as well as to key contemporary developments, what is at stake in the contributions is more a common concern than a shared position: the introduction of techniques (new knowledge formations, institutional forms, practices of management and self-management) and technologies (new materials, systems, energy production and conversion). How do these techniques and technologies, and above all their inter-relations, affect those who labour in architecture, the buildings they produce, and the discursive frameworks we mobilise to understand them? Industries of Architecture begins with critical examinations of modern architecture’s complex interests in industry. How has modern architecture articulated itself in relation to mass industrial production? This is followed by critical enquiries into two great sites for the industrial production of architecture: the building site and the architectural office. Chapters address questions on the production and circulation of value in architecture, the nature and qualities of labour—material and immaterial—the transformative potential of architectural production, and the necessarily social nature of production in architecture. Leaving these two sites, Industries of Architecture then examines how architecture is entwined and operative within a much wider field of industrial production and reproduction—finance capital, the spaces of law and regulation, and the technologies and techniques of material and social management.