Building And Telling
What if we started building without drawings? What if the construction of big projects was built on the imagination and storytelling of the building owner and the interpretation and capacity of the craftsmen?
By The Empty Square
What if we started building without drawings? What if the construction of big projects was built on the imagination and storytelling of the building owner and the interpretation and capacity of the craftsmen?
Quite an abstract thought today.
Photo: Gabriella Clare Marino
But that’s how it used to be even in the case of major public projects. The rebuilding of Piazza del Popolo in Rome by the end of the 15th century was based, not on precise drawings, but on the conversations between craftsmen, engineers, and pope Sixtus the 5th.
The pope described the buildings and the space as he imagined them; that was all, the builders had to work on. The oral instructions gave them freedom and flexibility, enabling a certain kind of relational understanding that today’s hands-off design doesn’t.
In The Craftsman, Richard Sennett claims that the separation of hand and head came along with the modern idea that buildings can be completely planned ahead. Today, 3D manipulations and simulations determine the design process, leading to buildings that in many cases lack the tactile, relational, and incomplete elements that add to the flexibility and uniqueness of a place.
Can we somehow reintegrate the wisdom of the hand and the quality of the imperfect into our buildings? Can we let building, telling, and dwelling come together again?
See Richard Sennett: The Craftsman (orig. 1997)