Digital Vernacular: Democratizing Architectural Making

Abstract

“Design, like war, is an uncertain trade, and we have to make the things we have designed before we can find out whether our assumptions are right or wrong… ’Research’ is very often a euphemism for trying the wrong ways first, as we all must do.”(1)

Vernacular, as it relates to architecture and design, is defined by material availability, community knowledge, and access to tools. Prior to the Industrial Age, most architecture was created in the vernacular tradition by the master craftsman. As J.B. Jackson observed in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, the architecture of farmers and wage earners was transformed with the settlement of North America. The abundance of wood, paired with the settlers’ knowledge of woodworking (community knowledge), spawned a vernacular revolution that has been carried out to the present. But this mode of practice has been threatened, first by the Industrial Age and most recently by the Information Age, as the traditional role of the architect has shifted away from that of the “master craftsman” to the professional “design worker.”(2) As a result, a divide between designing and making in the practice of architecture occurred. This shift impacted an essential part of the architect’s process by degrading the symbiotic relationship between mind and hand and limiting the immediate design consequences that only making can provide.

Recent technological developments have changed the economic model of designing and making in architectural practice. The cost reduction in digital fabrication tools over the past decade has allowed for greater community access to fabrication processes, encouraging a social entrepreneurialism which embraces the reconciliation of designing and making. The dissemination of digital fabrication tools and renewed interest in craft has spurred a 21st century hybrid mode of practice, which this paper will seek to define as the digital vernacular. This dissemination of technology into communities has created a niche for the digital vernacular to deliver services to those who otherwise could not have achieved them using normative practice. In order to demonstrate the potential of this new mode of practice, the paper will analyze specific case studies in which relevant technologies have inspired socially embedded innovations.

The digital vernacular is not merely a romanticized notion of a design future; rather it is grounded in technology available to the community. This theoretical framing seeks to focus design energies on more meaningful conversations – ones that seek the social and economic possibilities within the opportunities of today’s digital tools.

References:

1. David Pye, The Nature & Aesthetics of Design (New York: Van Norstrand Reinhold Company, 1978) 27.
2. Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (New York: The Penguin Press, 2009) 47, 138.