Building Systems: Design Technology and Society

by Kiel Moe (Editor), Ryan E. Smith (Editor)

Overview

We can no longer view building components as artifacts (a brick or a boiler) or as autonomous systems (air conditioning or prefabrication). Rather these components and systems are part of much larger systems of which architects are one agent. This book will help architects more broadly envision these networks including :

 
• canonical texts as well as contemporary thinking from well known theorists and practitioners, each contribution frames a specific range of technology in relation to society such as building process, products, economies and ecologies
• clearly structured, the book is divided into three parts; each accompanied by a comprehensive introduction by the editors
• an annotated bibliography provides a glossary of further reading
• illustrated throughout with over 100 illustrations.

The book calls for integration, a convergence and confluence of social and technical factors, discovering the capability and culpability of such; for architects to finally realize that the term building systems is best grasped as a verb, not a set of nouns.

This reader presents students, faculty and practicing architects with an expanded view of technology in architecture that transcends naive determinisms and technocratic applications; forming a more pithy intellectual context for the complex and contingent roles of technology in twenty-first century architecture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415617949
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/17/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 11.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Kiel Moe is Assistant Professor of Architectural Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Ryan E. Smith is Associate Professor and Director of the Integrated Technology in Architecture Center at the University of Utah, College of Architecture and Planning.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations vii

List of contributors xiii

List of sources xvii

Prologue xix

Introduction: systems, technics, and society Kiel Moe Ryan E. Smith 1

Part 1 Building systems 11

1 Construction history: between technological and cultural history Antoine Picon 13

2 How the introduction of iron in construction changed and developed thought patterns in design Tom F. Peters 34

3 Retrofitting and redacting masonry engineering Philippe Block 73

4 Building systems/building territories: industrialized housing delivery and the role of the architect Ivan Rupnik 86

Part 2 Building economies 105

5 "Architecture or Revolution": Taylorism, technocracy, and social change Mary McLeod 109

6 Glass and light: the influence of interior illumination on the "Chicago School" Thomas Leslie 145

7 Obsolescence: notes towards a history Daniel M. Abramson 159

8 Risky business, fishy forms Ellen Dineen Grimes 171

Part 3 Building ecologies 183

9 Household conditioning (if you are cold, put on a sweater) William W. Braham 185

10 A house within a house Hilary Sample 193

11 Architectural production and sociotechnical codes: a theoretical framework Steven A. Moore Barbara B. Wilson 212

Annotated bibliography 229

List of illustration credits 237

Index 241