The hand in architecture

Abstract

This design research investigates a critical question pertaining to the exchange between hand and architecture through making and the author's praxis. ‘What is the role of the hand and manual production in the practice of architecture today?’ Making and experimentation at the locus of workshop permit the drawing-out and discovery of the cryptic in architecture where the extemporaneous and accidental are allowed to flourish thus opening the gate for a spatial and architectural birth of the new. Making anything by hand results in the expanded awareness of ones architectural repertoire across all bodily senses and keeps protected and vital the dexterity that is invariably fundamental to the pursuit of architecture. This design research proceeds a methodology whereby the architectonics of making which in turn are considered as a critical part to a larger framework are assimilated through the maker and the work itself. The methodological approach is tempered with restraint through the making of a drawing-book that is used in the process as a means of evaluation of making and coalescence between drawing, thinking and doing at the helm of masters thesis. The garrison of architectural project is intrinsic in the making by cause of the compositional and physical consequences coupled with theoretical rigour within a non-linear and analytical design process. The body of work is the architectural project and forms an advisory construct for the maker and thinker in architecture. Pertinent to this research is the framing of design physically and theoretically through assimilation, transformation and repose wherein from within, the total project is advanced and driven through the mechanism of which it is embodied. A building from making and making from building entails a project for a hand clinic on Quail Island in Lyttelton Harbour. This territory is critical to the author's practice and intention whereby the body as measuring tool and the workshop as domain of making and experimentation concur as integral components of this design research. The investigation is ordered in four chapters each exemplifying design research and disclosing the consequences of this inquiry through making and writing. Chapter one is pragmatic and reductive in order to facilitate framing through the author's interest in the hand while chapter two explores in depth the work of others which is integrated. Chapter three reveals the making process in intimate detail as this is critical to the presentation of the author's research and findings. Chapter four in closing concludes the work. Developing and assimilating knowledge through practice is a fundamental element intrinsic to this design research. The author ascertains that nothing is ever purely made by hand and that through making and experimentation an architectural project is composed. Through the process of making each event builds upon the one preceding and knowledge is acquired through doing. A critical distance must be measured between maker and work in order that critique of the project is sincere and that the maker can see through the work also. Technique and precision constitute parts of a procedure and the objective of this thesis is binary by virtue of its depth of exploration and tutelage.