Project description
Understanding interdependence in architecture through stone production
Architecture is a material field, but its history tends to focus on the influence of individuals and ideas. This approach overlooks the importance of materials and craftsmanship in creating architectural works. Stone, the most prized building material, reveals the sequential nature of architectural production and the importance of community involvement. The ERC-funded STONE-WORK project focuses on collective effort and emphasises that buildings result from cumulative actions by different actors, from material procurement to fashioning. The project will analyse the relationship between material, design, and execution in architecture and stone production by using archival material for the classical architecture of 18th century Britain and Ireland. Project outcomes will provide a comprehensive understanding of interdependence in architectural production.
Objective
STONE-WORK challenges the perception of architecture as a primarily conceptual activity by shifting focus from individual to collective achievement. Despite the emphatic materiality of architecture its history remains dominated by a sequential model which privileges the agency of individuals and ideas. STONE-WORK’s fundamental premise is that architecture results from a cumulative sequence of actions involving an array of actors, great and small. There can be no buildings without materials and no materials without those who procure, transport, and fashion them. How can design be related to the material from which it takes form and the skills which give it form? Though interdependence of systems and actors is a key scientific concept, it has had inadequate impact on the study of early modern architecture. Stone, the most valued building material of the period, offers a way into architectural process which forces us to include the broader community involved in the making of buildings. No other medium so fully encapsulates the sequential nature of architectural production involving a wide range of agents of varying skill and authority. Revealing stone’s hidden trajectory from quarry to wall, floor, column, and chimneypiece will probe the nexus of skills, techniques, and support mechanisms developed by communities in its sourcing, supply, and fashioning and the impact of these processes upon building activity. This cross-disciplinary research, combining the history of architecture and craft with geology, will produce the first holistic analysis of architecture and stone production, thereby interrogating the relationship of material, design, and execution. The prodigious classical architecture of Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century, richly documented in untapped archival material, is an exemplary episode in monumental stone building which offers a meaningful, accessible, and feasible route into the complex problem of interdependence in architectural production.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
D02 CX56 DUBLIN 2
Ireland