Building Sites

Building Sites addresses the urgent need to advance the critical understanding of relations between architectural design and the labour of building. While recognising that in many parts of the world building takes place through self-organised processes and traditional skills, the book questions a central and problematic omission in architectural discourse, education and practice – the production of buildings and the erasure of construction labour entailed by that omission. Through its engagement with the groundbreaking work of the architect and theorist Sérgio Ferro, who developed a history of architecture ‘seen from the building site’, the book sets out a programme for a new field of Production Studies for architecture and other disciplines.

First, the field requires careful research into the production of the built environment – at the construction site, in the factory, in the design office and beyond. This volume explores historical and contemporary cases from Brazil, the UK, Yugoslavia, Germany, India, Mexico and the USA. Second, the book asks why the disciplinary silencing of production prevails. In Ferro’s view, the tendency of architectural discourse to ignore issues of labour and processes of construction is no mere oversight but rather a structural necessity for maintaining the profession’s capacity to act ‘on’ and ‘over’ the building site, a necessity arising organically from the development of capitalism. Turning also to Morris, Harvey, Chakrabarty and Malm, the collection provides the first sustained English-language engagement with Ferro’s theories and critiques. Chapters on radical pedagogies, unions and political alliances, and alternative forms of building take the third step – to respond to contemporary crises. Production Studies must mobilise its understanding to seek alternatives and work towards change.