Pursuing a sense of the emergent through craft practices in architectural design

Abstract

This paper focuses on ‘craft’ (as an aggregation of iterative actions) both as an aspect of architectural design practices, and in relation to the paradigm of emergence. The aim is to reconsider the idea of emergence in relation to everyday design practices, and to examine how the craft aspect of architectural design practices might become present in architectural outcomes. The paper explores a notion of emergent craft as it pertains to architectural design through a comparison between two of the author’s projects: the first while studying at the Architectural Association’s Design Research Laboratory (AADRL), London, in 2002 (Kinetetras — a prototype for a flexible, programmable space frame exhibited at the Latent Utopias exhibition in Graz, Austria); and, the second, a small house produced some ten years later at Lang’s Beach in New Zealand. Through a discussion of the design processes of the two projects, craft is explored in terms of Steven Johnson’s notion of emergence, and in relation to Donald Schön’s notion of reflection-in-action, and further in relation to Peter Downton’s notion of knowing-through-making. The paper articulates a difference between knowing-through-drawing and knowing-through- modelling as emergent forms of knowledge. Working through these terms the paper identifies two issues: The first is that knowing-through-drawing and knowing-through-crafting models are complementary ways of knowing-through-making; the second is that they operate in tension. What emerges in relation to that tension is a quality of approach to design which is termed ‘craftiness’. It is characteristically collage-like and presents in the architectural outcome as its defining quality. The paper concludes with a summary comparison between the two projects, and articulates the Lang’s project as a re-grounding and expansion of research into emergent complexity in the context of an everyday design practice. Introduction