This research addresses how different ways of making entail different ways of knowing,
exploring how material production and knowledge intersect and inform one another. Specifically,
it investigates the knowledge within crafts — examining how skill is developed in the way
craftspeople work – and hypothesises that the material and social conditions surrounding craft
practice produce a specific rationality: a process-oriented way of knowing. These considerations
are brought together in a theory of knowledge in the material productions – an epistemology of
making – whose tenets are subsequentially tested within the field of architecture. Through this
set of conceptual and theoretical tools, the research thus analyses the dynamics of knowing
and making in architecture. Ultimately, this study reflects on the implications of approaching
architecture from the vantage point of its production, offering valuable insights into the dialectics
of design and construction. ... Read more

American sociologist Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman is possibly the most influential work on craft and craftsmanship in recent decades. Sennett’s arguments, different from previous studies on craft, are constructed with a focus on people. He defends craftsmanship as present not only in the products of craft, but primarily in the way people perform their practice, envisioning an outcome marked by excellence; in his terms, a desire to ‘make things well’. [...] ... Read more

The study of built objects has always played a key role in the education of the architect. At the earliest stages of training most of us sat in front of buildings and drew them, trying to capture their overall features and minute details. What appears simple is, in fact, an extremely meaningful exercise. It presumes that drawing an existing object allows us to understand what decisions were made in its conception, granted that evidence of those decisions is actually there, congealed as empirical evidence and available for further use. As students advance in their studies, this close attention to objects and the decisions that define them gives way to more complex reflections. Final year students seldom sit in front of buildings and draw them. Their fascination with societal issues and formal innovation seems to leave little room to ponder on the apparently simple ways in which materials come together. Likewise, interest in the built as a source of knowledge appears to wane among faculty who inclined towards fashionable forms of scholarship outsource technological research and education to engineers and other pragmatists. While architectural education’s turn towards the humanities offers new and exciting possibilities, the relegation of the built to a mere problem-solving role is not without its consequences. Among them, perhaps the most unfortunate outcome of assuming construction as applied, externally produced knowledge, is that it robs us of rare and precious insight that is ingrained in the built. Looking for that insight, we will describe how a design studio can use construction as a means for students to produce and develop their own architectural knowledge. Our description will be favored by an outline of the supporting theory, the epistemology we used to operate it, and the methodology employed to teach the course. Throughout a ten-week period, we accompanied a group of sixteen master’s students in their process of exploration, evaluation and discovery of four details from existing buildings. Our goal, and the challenge we presented to the group, was to obtain from these details a theory and a new design. ... Read more

In the words of Dutch archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers, craft is “a way of exploring and understanding the material world”. This definition suggests that craftsmanship can be understood as a touchstone for a theory of knowledge in material productions. By exploring the role of skill in the processes of making and its epistemic correspondence, I develop the hypothesis that craftsmanship is as a perceptive-cognitive enactment within the making process, a form of attunement with production. The argument is that the material, productive side of work deploys and operates a particular epistemological regime, based on types of practical engagement deeply related to the possibilities and contingencies of objective, concrete reality. Making means implicating oneself with the material world, embedding the body in the processes of transforming matter and partaking in the flows of forces that form things. Thus, the knowledge in the making – skill – can be understood as the invention or establishment of a new mode of perception through action that is enacted by tools, movements, techniques etc. This practical perception acts as the foundational basis on which craftsmanship is performed, representing its conditions of possibility. Given the perceptual, embodied nature of craftsmanship, its transmission is rendered impossible outside the actual engagement with production. As such, this interpretation refers back to the original distinctions made by Gilbert Ryle of “knowing that” and “knowing how” that influenced Michael Polanyi in his definition of tacit knowledge. The particular epistemic rationality of crafts provides insights for understanding knowledge inside disciplines involved with creative practice, such as architecture. The epistemic coupling with production helps to understand how architects design, but it also reveals a general epistemic schism in the discipline, founded in the inconsistency between abstract designerly knowledge and the craftsmanship of construction. ... Read more

This paper explores the distinct networks of technical and embodied knowledge present in the development of the 78+ construction system in timber, designed in the 1970-80s by Flemish design office Battaile Ibens. It develops the history of the knooppunt, a joint of a particular material and technical complexity that structures the system’s wooden beams and cross-shaped columns, and argues for the understanding of architecture and construction as complex constellations of different crafts and skills, including but not limited to architectural design and engineering. Design and technical decisions are traced in parallel to economic and marketing strategies, weaving together social and material phenomena that shaped the system’s history. From the initial designs and prototyping, through publicity decisions and appearances in international expositions, until its idealization in the office’s approach, the history of the knooppunt exemplifies the interplay between different stakeholders and knowledge orbiting the technological development of construction systems. ... Read more

The term “Capitalocene” represents a critical attempt to advance from the notion of “Anthropocene”. Popularized by climate change debates, the term Anthropocene describes a geological epoch in which human activity is currently the main driving force behind the global environmental transformation. Its use faces criticism, however, as the term fails to address the discrepancy in the relationships between different human cultures and the biosphere, attributing the phenomenon to a vague, undifferentiated notion of humanity. On the other hand, the idea of capitalocene recognizes that the environmental state of affairs is not a general consequence of human activity, but a specific result of a material culture fostered by the capitalist mode of production, globalized through the mould of Western industrial society. Therefore, it highlights the geopolitical origins of the crisis, as well as its economic nature, demonstrating the asymmetrical powers and the class struggles behind and within environmental conflicts. ... Read more

The essay seeks to point out contemporary phenomena of de-creasing autonomy by the alienation of everyday skills that, together with architectural drawing, promote the architect and urbanist’s figure to that of an expert, thus imobilizing its practice in a heteronomous form. It aims the exposition, with the critiques of Ivan Illich and Sérgio Ferro, how the architect’s practice contributes to the alienation and exploitation of the construction worker’s labor in detriment of the body-skill dialectics, which would allow for a closer relation between individual and society. Opposing this alienation processes, both in consuming as in the production of architecture, with studies about technology and anthropology, it argues in favour of a politics of transformation of architectures technology based on the relation between body, skills, apprenticeship and technique. ... Read more

Este texto foi motivado pela parceria do MOM, entre 2014 e 2015, com os crupos Cideade e Aleteridade, e Pólos de Cidadania, ambos da Escola de Direito da UFMG, do desenvolvimento da pesquisa Direito fundamental à motadia adequada: novos olhares sobre os impactos e efeitos das políticas públicas de assentamentos e reassentamentos em aglomerados urbanos em Belo Horizonte, coordenada por Miracy Gustin, com financiamento da FAPEMIG. O texto articula os resultados de outras pesquitas do MOM no Aglomerado da Serra e na Vila das Antenas no Morro das Pedras. O conjunto dessas pesquisas monstrou que a política habitacional em Belo Horizonte é fortemente caracterizada por remoções. A partir disso, foram firsutidas diretrizes junto ao Ministério Público Federal para garantir a monutenção ou melhoria das chamadas condições sócio-espaciais. ... Read more

This essay aims to show that in many of the theories that fundament material culture and architectural experience, labor is implied in the constitution of material and, although seldom directly addressed, it is a determining dimension of materiality. From the Vitruvian and Renaissance treatises and Gottfried Semper to John Ruskin and the Art and Crafts Movement, the underlying presence of labor can be seen intertwined with materials whenever they are called into architectural discussion as sensorial arguments. Just like the physical qualities of materials, labor, skills and techniques are imprinted in the built environment and contribute to the creation of particular atmospheres. ... Read more

The present essay seeks to point out contemporary phenomena of decreasing autonomy by the alienation of everyday skills that, together with architectural drawing, promote the architects figure to that of an expert, thus immobilizing its practice in a heteronomous form. It aims the exposition, with the critiques of Ivan Illich and Sérgio Ferro, how the architect’s practice contributes to the alienation and exploitation of the construction worker’s labour in detriment of the body-skill dialectics, which would allow for a closer relation between individual and society. Opposing this alienation processes, both in consuming as in the production of architecture, with studies about technology and anthropology, I hope to argue in favour of a politics of transformation of architectures technology based on the relation between body, skills, learning and technique. ... Read more

This essay proposes an analysis using the “symbolic economy of predation” to provide new perspectives on the question of pixo. For this, pixo will be considered as any act on walls, building facades, asphalt or monuments rejecting the hierarchical separations between writing, scribbling, painting or graffiti imposed by the art system and other institutions.
In Amerindian ontology, as Viveiros de Castro describes, the feeding regime is the predominant model upon which relations are perceived. The predator and prey duality stands as the archetypical role ruling interactions between different subjectivities and perspectives. This “symbolic economy” permeates social relations and translates them into a particular epistemology shared by many indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon region.
We aim to consider the relationships between those who practice pixo and the city through an analogy with the predator and prey dialectic. We argue that, on the one hand, these taggers get symbolical dominion over the city’s territory by marking places with their signatures, thus gaining recognition from their peers; on the other, the city - represented by formal governmental and economic institutions - preys upon taggers by criminalizing their practice as vandalism and by socioeconomically excluding peripheral populations, thus denying their access and right to the city itself. Pixo is a reaction to the passive role imposed on society that gains critical and artistic qualities as a practice of protest, endorsing its predatory performance.
This analogy intents provide a new perspective to describe the city and its complex relations with the aesthetical and social realities of its inhabitants. A distinct description of the urban relations that might enable planners and policymakers to evaluate socio-political phenomena within the city through a new set of lenses, allowing the development of innovative approaches to tackle and decriminalize conflictual practices as the pixo.
... Read more

This article covers a question relative to the double determination and dialecticityin the concept of labour, as developed by Marx from the Hegelian dialectics. It seeksto demonstrate the ontological significance of the concept to the Marxian thought,a key element in his critics as a path to self-conscience and as a territory foralienation. Through the inquiry on the concepts of abstraction concreteness inrelation to labour, it hopes to clarify its employment and epistemological reach asit provides an understanding of alienation as a process of abstraction that,projected in the social relations of production, becomes concrete. ... Read more