Thesis

Stephen Rowe
999043306
ARCH 4018Y
Professors David Lieberman
Recent advances in digital fabrication like 3d printing, CNC milling and laser cutting are transforming the construction and design industries. These changes can be either positive (flattening hierarchy’s, increasing the opportunities for artistic expression and collaboration between designer and manufacturers, bringing the economies of mass production into the realms of custom fabrication) or they can be destructive depriving skilled tradesman of their livelihoods, creating a frivolous culture of artistic novelty and further separating consumers from the many rewards of carefully handcrafted objects designed to last generations. It is imperative that architects and designers learn to integrate these technologies into their practices in thoughtful and responsible ways.
The architects, intellectuals and craftsman of the Arts and Crafts movement faced many of these same issues at the dawn of the industrial age. Inspired by both the reactionary art critic John Ruskin and the revolutionary journalist and political philosopher Karl Marx they proposed a compressive vision for a cultural transformation that moved the focus of material production away from industrial processes that privileged the role of the autonomous artist/designer and back to individual creative craftsmen with the aim of creating a society the was at the same time vibrant, creative, equitable and humane.
The purpose of this thesis is not to slavishly follow the example of these great men but to learn from both their success and failures. My hope is that I can use their hard won knowledge to develop strategies that will help us integrate new building technologies into contemporary practice in intelligent ways that not only preserves the role of traditional craftsmanship but actually promotes it.