Katie Lloyd Thomas & Will Thomson
„Dividing Lines: Architecture’s Tools of Separated Design - a Production Studies Approach“
In this seminar Will Thomson will introduce some of his thesis research on Chinese construction sites and building labour and show examples of a traditional tool for setting out the building – the modou – as an object to think with about the division between design and labour. Picking up on the role of architectural techniques of separation in Sergio Ferro’s hard-hitting analysis of the relation of architecture and building labour, and on Katie Lloyd Thomas's research on the architectural specification, we will show how these, and other questions raised by Ferro’s work are informing the development of the new field of Production Studies in our Anglo-Brazilian research project TF/TK. For more about Translating Ferro/Transforming Knowledges of Architecture, Labour and Design for the New Field of Production Studies see www.tf-tk.com
Katie Lloyd Thomas is Professor of Theory and History of Architecture at Newcastle University. She is an editor at the international journal arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, and a founder member of the feminist collective taking place. Her research is concerned with materiality and technology, and their intersections with architectural concepts, practice and design, and with feminist practice and theory. Notable edited collections include Material Matters (Routledge, 2007) and with Tilo Amhoff and Nick Beech Industries of Architecture (Routledge Critiques, 2015). Her monograph Building Materials: Material theory and the architectural specification was recently published in London (Bloomsbury, 2021). In her current joint Brazil/UK project Translating Ferro/Transforming Knowledges of Architecture, Design and Labour for the New Field of Production Studies (funded by the AHRC and FAPESP), she debates and explores the cross-cultural potential of the unique and significant body of the work of the Brazilian architect, artist and theorist Sérgio Ferro for understanding art, architecture and design through the lens of labour and production.
Will Thomson is a Research Associate at Newcastle University in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning. He received his doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology from New York University in 2015. His research focuses on design-labour relations; issues of urbanism and migration in contemporary China; and the critical ethnography of design. His current book project, China Constructs builds on two years of doctoral fieldwork research in China, supported by grants from the NSF, SSRC, and the Wenner-Gren foundation. His fieldwork included participant observation on building sites alongside rural construction workers in Xi’an, with Chinese architects in local design studios, and in extended travel with workers to villages in the Qinling mountains. Prior to Newcastle University, Thomson was a postdoctoral fellow in Chinese studies at the University of Michigan and lecturer in Architecture and Anthropology. His published writing includes “Encounters with Labour: Migrant Workers, Architects, and Building Sites in China” in the Architectural Research Quarterly (2017) and “Masculinity at Its Margins: Migrant Construction Work in China,” in WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly (2017).
When:
26.01.2022, 18 - 19.30h
Where:
Zoom
Meeting-ID: 628 1807 8424
Pass code: 656051