Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product.Preoccupation with image and a failure to look at process has led entire generations of architects to overlook transfer technologies and transfer processes. Kieran and Timberlake argue that the time has come to re-evaluate and update the basic design and construction methods that have constrained the building industry throughout its history. They skillfully demonstrate that contemporary architectural construction is a linear process, in both design and construction, where segregation of intelligence and information is the norm. They convince the reader to look at the automobile, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries to learn how to incorporate collective intelligence and nonhierarchical production structures. Those industries have proven to be progressively economic, efficient, and they yield a higher quality product while the production of buildings stagnates in the methods and practices of the nineteenth century. The transfer they envision is the complete integration of design with the craft of assembly supported by the materials scientist, the product engineer, and the process engineer, all using the tools of present information science as the central enabler.
The new architecture will not be about style, but rather about substance -- about the very methods and processes that underlie making.
Few architects have considered building construction...as carefully and insightfully...opportunity to improve...quality and speed of construction and design. (
Architectural Record 2004-08-01)
By using thoughtfully designed elements...buildings can be "produced" in less time and at less cost while remaining true to good design and the needs of the space. (
Civil Engineering 2004-04-01)
Excerpts from
Get Smart section of magazine by Barbara Flanagan
Implacable sculpture made by ancient methods is no way to build now, say architects Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake...the partners claim that a new industrial revolution ought to transform the way buildings are planned, designed, constructed, and operated.
In short, they want to redesign design.
Why do ships, cars, planes, and spaceships keep getting better, while buildings don't budge? Part of the problem is that architects don't fully exploit "transfer technologies" -- that is they don't mine fields outside their niche. To speed the progress, Kieran Timberlake tries to turn down projects with "obvious" solutions and has, for the past two years, run a tiny inhouse think tank for nonapplied research...
SmartWrap, exhibited last fall at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, is one fruit of the 55-person firm's collaboration with students and with manufacturers such as DuPont. The project, resembling gift-wrapped scaffolding, showcased a "first-generation prototype" of a potential building material that absorbs energy and then uses it to heat, cool, light, decorate, and communicate. ...
...the firm's proudest achievement is the new addition to Penn's engineering school. Their plot to undermine architecture emerges in their new book refabricating Architecture. (I.D. Magazine 2004-01-15)
