The carriage in the needle: Building design and flexible specialization systems

Journal of Architectural Education

Volumn 52, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 134-142

  Tombesi, Paolo ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049333644     PISSN: 10464883     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1531-314x.1999.tb00264.x     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. Karl Marx, "Division of Labour and Manufacture," in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (New York: Modern Library, 1936)
2. Jean-Rodolphe Perronet's analyses were eventually organized in a book; Remarques à l'Art de l'Epinglier (Paris, 1762)
3. For a discussion of the subject, see Antoine Picon, L'Invention de l'Ingénieur Moderne (Paris: Presse de l'Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, 1992)
4. For a detailed analysis of this aspect, see Paul Bentel, "Idealism and Enterprise: Modernism and Professionalism in American Architecture, 1919-1933" (Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], Architecture, 1992)
5. I am borrowing these observations from the analysis of the conceptual structure of the building project undertaken by Roberto Pietroforte in his "Communication and Use of Design Information in the Building Delivery Process" (Ph.D. diss. MIT, Civil Engineering, 1992)
6. Several commentaries - for example, Omer Akin, Psychology of Architectural Design (London: Dion, 1986)
7. and Bryan Lawson, How Designers Think (Oxford and New York: Architectural Press, 1980)
8. See Mark Swenarton, Artisans and Architects: The Ruskinian Tradition in Architectural Thought (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989)
9. and Susan Piedmont-Palladino and Alden Branch, Devil's Workshop: 25 Years of Jersey Devil Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997)
10. As Allen Scott explains, "Commodity production comprises a system of labor processes in which workers manipulate tools and equipment so as to bring forth sellable outputs. . . . This definition of commodity production depends in no way on the physical form or character of outputs, but only on the specific social relations that govern their production. By this definition, therefore, such intangibles as information, news, and advice are commodities, just as raw materials and manufactured outputs are." Allen Scott, Metropolis: From the Division of Labor to Urban Form (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), p. 26
11. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 1984)
12. Alfred Marshall developed the notion of the industrial district at the end of the last century. Marshall used the term industrial district to indicate specific geographic areas, specialized in the production of particular goods and characterized by networks of firms, which were able to remain at the forefront of their own technologies without consolidating the fragmented structure of the sector. See: Alfred Marshall, Elements of Economics of Industry (New York: Macmillan, 1900)
13. See Michael Storper and Bennett Harrison, "Flexibility, Hierarchy, and Regional Development: The Changing Structure of Industrial Production Systems and Their Forms of Governance in the 1990s," Research Policy 20 (1991): 407-22
14. and Michael Piore, "Technological Trajectories and the Classical Revival in Economics," in: Michael Storper and Allen Scott, eds., Pathways to Industrialization and Regional Development (London: Routledge, 1992)
15. See Anna Pollert, ed., Farewell to Flexibility? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)
16. David Haviland comes to the same conclusion in "Current Shifts and Dislocations in the Design and Procurement of Buildings" (unpublished manuscript, 1990)