Posts from the ‘Thoughts’ Category
Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present to and participate in the “Building as Object and as Project” workshop hosted in Torup, Denmark by Copenhagen Business School’s Centre for Management Studies of the Building Process. What a tremendous opportunity to engage with the latest thinking and works in progress of pivotal academics with a sociological perspective on construction project complexity!
It seems that, in this particular community, Actor Network Theory is flavour of the day and it does seem to be yielding insights. As the theme of the workshop was design orientations towards a ‘building as project’ view and, never one to hoist my methodological flag on any particular pole, I attempted to argue for a conceptual linking of Ingold’s taskscape (which underpinned his ‘as project’ view), Brand et al.’s Long Now, Brand’s prior ‘shearing layers of change’ work, and kinematics (but with movement conceived temporally rather than spatially). All of this allows, I think, a new conceptualisation of buildings as constantly shifting entities that need to be nurtured, rather than conserved (or even preserved) over time. They can be thought of as animated; of having the animacy and constant ‘becoming’ (rather than simply ‘being’) that (the few) Architects seeing modality emphasise.
I’m not sure if I hit home, but I did notice a few delegates picking up on the animacy concept the day after and several were already using Brand’s shearing layers model in their work.
Anyway, a copy of my working paper is here (please get in touch if you would like to cite it, as my thinking continues to develop around these topics and hopefully the paper will soon become out of date). The slides from my talk are below. Some of these slides are taken from colleagues’ work at Loughborough, looking at new models of adaptable building provision (i.e. ways of practically responding to this conceptualisation, and others).
Said in relation to Job’s ‘prophecy’ that desktop computers will soon be dead to the mainstream:
I picked up a phrase some time ago that I think applies: “The next big thing is always beneath contempt.” Implication being that it is, of course, until it isn’t. Until it’s too big to ignore. This has happened over and over again in our society. In the middle ages, people assumed that no serious discussion could happen in anything but Latin — the so-called “vulgar” languages had no merit. And writers assumed that nothing interesting or lasting would come from this new medium of television. And, I think, people assume right now that nothing important will be created from a 10” touch screen without a keyboard (let alone a tiny 3.5” screen).
Consider this article – which points out the problems with arguing that the sustainability agenda is self-perpetuating (which it is, but only to a degree) – with this ‘beneath contempt’ notion and the perceptions of sustainable development that existed 15 or so years ago in mind, and you have to wonder just what the next big thing will be. Something that we currently view with distain, perhaps. I wonder if it will be the rebirth of the trades? After all, we have a youth unemployment problem and up-front payment now makes university an unattractive option to many…
Five ex-Davis Langdon partners setting up their own practice to embody the original values of Davis Langdon, before it was taken over.
When the US buy-outs of the large QS practices commenced, one of the responses was to bemoan the death of the traditional (albeit huge) partnership and the career path that it brought. The question was asked: what would make working for a multi-national construction consultant any different to working for management consultants of the likes of IBM or Accenture?
One of the responses was that, while mainstream professional construction services may well be offered through a management consultancy model that apes other sectors and, potentially, devalues the professional institutions, those who truly cared about the craft and praxis of their work would find another way of enacting their values. Commentators suggested that small, focused ’boutique’ practices would emerge.
And what do we have here? Interesting times.
With the Avengers doing so well at the box office, there’s a good few Joss Whedon quotes floating around at the moment. This one:
I’ve had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agreed. That’s every artist’s dream. That’s the brass ring.
makes me wonder if there’s really anything different between academic works and those traditionally thought of as ‘creative.’ All an academic wants is for their work to make a contribution that other people consider worthwhile and useable. That’s why we exist: to create and advance knowledge; rather than to advance (usually political) agendas through entertainment.
So, just how complicated is a construction project?
Answer – About this much:
This is a social network elicited from email communications between the client’s project manager on an average, moderately-sized project (c. £20m; no particular design or process issues). It was produced by a student with an EPSRC summer bursary who’s been working for myself and colleagues for the last ten weeks.
We’re now working on interpreting this complexity. Already, we’re characterised an interesting and hitherto unacknowledged change in the nature of the client project manager’s interactions with the rest of the construction project over time. These are associated with leadership qualities. I can’t say much more, as we’re yet to publish but suffice to say: “watch this space!”
We’re also working on identifying emergent, normative communities within all this complexity and inferring the rationale for that project structure from the nature of the low path-distance subnetworks within it.
By the way, there are over 12,000 email messages in the figure above…
The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes.
The second step is to disregard that which can’t be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading.
The third step is to presume that what can’t be measured isn’t important. This is blindness.
The fourth step is to say that what can’t easily be measured really doesn’t exist. This is suicide.
Charles Handy (1995), “The Empty Raincoat” p. 219.
Why is this relevant to my work? All will be revealed shortly.
I had a great time this weekend working with past colleagues (you know who you are…) pulling together ideas on the possible form of collaborative funding.
It seems that a seismic change is coming. With new modes of building use that people just won’t understand. Tension between tradition and innovation is becoming tangible. Interesting times indeed.
Dr. Derek S. Thomson 