Industries of Architecture

At a time when the technologies and techniques of producing the built environment are undergoing significant change, this book makes central architecture’s relationship to industry. Contributors turn to historical and theoretical questions, as well as to key contemporary developments, taking a humanities approach to the Industries of Architecture that will be of interest to practitioners and industry professionals, as much as to academic researchers, teachers and students. How has modern architecture responded to mass production? How do we understand the necessarily social nature of production in the architectural office and on the building site? And how is architecture entwined within wider fields of production and reproduction―finance capital, the spaces of regulation, and management techniques? What are the particular effects of techniques and technologies (and above all their inter-relations) on those who labour in architecture, the buildings they produce, and the discursive frameworks we mobilise to understand them?

Tilo Amhoff is Senior Lecturer in Architectural Humanities at the University of Brighton and a PhD candidate at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL). His research investigates the plan as specific medium and cultural technique that established a particular way of administrating and governing various entities; such as the factory, the city, and the economy in late 19th and early 20th century Germany. He is founder member of Netzwerk Architekturwissenschaft. (http://www.architekturwissenschaft.net)

Nick Beech is Lecturer in London’s History at Queen Mary, University of London. His research concerns the transformation of the construction industry and architectural professions during and immediately following the Second World War. Nick also researchers European ‘New Left’ arguments of the mid-twentieth century relating to ‘culture’, the ‘everyday’ and state formation. He currently holds (2014–1016) an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship with the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Katie Lloyd Thomas is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Newcastle University where she co-directs ARC, the Architecture Research Collaborative, and is an editor of the international journal arq. Her research is concerned with materiality in architecture and with feminist practice and theory. She is co-founder of the feminist collective taking place www.takingplace.org.uk. and edited Material Matters (Routledge, 2007). Her monograph Preliminary Operations: Material theory and the architectural specification is in preparation.