Search

When developmental vernacular practice is telescoped into industrial activity, the role played by construction workers in the honing of a craft is rapidly bypassed. An almost political act is required to maintain the contribution that the hand makes to the uniformity of result that is demanded by the standard classification of typologies of building and technique. Research into fabric formwork techniques conducted by the author utilises the flexibility of the concrete mould to explore the meaning of the making ‘process’ and the workers’ role in relation to the formal ‘result’.The author's ‘Wall One’ exemplifies the exploratory prototypeand its potential for variety and the trace of the hand in making. The shift to a mass-production typologyinvolved in realising the 325,000 square-metre Heatherwick Studio project in Shanghai presented the problem of how to orchestrate the fabric into a fully industrialised process. Part of the research then became how to make the shift from play to profit—and can anything of craft survive the transition into the international development marketplace? Through managing the inherent variety available to the fabric itself, a fabric-based formwork solution for realising a building at the scale of a landscape offered the Chinese formwork maker the opportunity to be present within the results of a fully industrialised process—a ghost in the machine.

Presents letters to the editor referencing articles and topics discussed in previous issues. "Let It Sink," which was published in the August 24 issue; Importance of the United Nations; "The Phantom Interview," which was published in the June 29 issue; "The Right Not to Know," which was published in the August 10 and 17 issues.