Making America p.2

Recent movements in fashion and product design have given way to what I will call the material rugged, or a new viability for the less-produced (as opposed to mass-produced) American brand. These products focus on quality over quantity, or ruggedness, that is a reflection of a balance between traditional and innovative techniques, skilled craftsmanship, and material usage. They have created a domestic and international market for specialized, high-quality products.

This ruggedness can be defined as rough, discrete, heterogeneous, dynamic, and strong. These qualities are manifest architecturally by the workshop, a productive space in which people deal face-to-face with the issues of labor, education, authority and the play between adaptability and skill (Sennet, 54). Unlike the modern factory, where tools are specialized to the point of automation and workers generally unskilled, in the workshop tools are necessarily general, optimized to adapt to the dynamic demands of small-scale production. This adaptability and a necessity on well-built, rugged, output demands skilled workers are developed through apprenticeship where the rough, unskilled, worker is hewn and trained through labor into the master herself.

In addition to ruggedness, the increasing democratization of technology is empowering productive entrepreneurs with ever-decreasing capital investment. The implication is easier initial entry into market. But the environment with which to nurture these opportunities has been limited to incubators, hackerspaces, and web-based collaborative systems. Through the integration of cohesive trade-based pedagogy into an archipelago of discrete urban workshops a new productive environment can develop. An environment for the balance of authority to autonomy and protection to publicness necessary to cultivate the balances in a growing productive business.

A dedication to these largely forgotten models would provide the fulfillment of a Jacobian economic transition in the US from traditional craft production to mass-production to differentiated production (Jacobs, 261). Where small scale production negates the “tax on diversity” of products and undermines the economy of scale that American producers can no longer compete with.

Unfortunately these phenomena are generally too easily dismissed as sentimental or ineffectual. But the embedded notions in ruggedness, making, and apprenticeship of reduced consumption, skilled labor training, and domestic production must instead be perceived as both contemporary and progressive.

Neil Gershenfield of the MIT Media Lab has said, “now that we are empowered to make anything, machines that can make machines require businesses that make businesses.” This project positions itself as a speculative framework to cultivate new American productive business in middle-sized cities. For American cities to benefit from these phenomena the new rugged workshop must be situated carefully within a productive urban and architectural framework. [more to come.]

Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969.

Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008.

Making America p.1

My working thesis is interested in how differentiated production, in the form of small workshops, can contribute to the re-urbanization, education and growth of a new American productivity. The project addresses the topic at three scales. First, given the recent re-emergence of small-scale production and making, with a renewed interest in quality over quantity, how might design respond and empower this movement? Second, with the blighted urban condition of many middle-sized American cities, what opportunities for productive speculation exist? How can productive and educational architecture be adapted to the urban low-rise townhouses that account for a majority of this blight? Finally, in the immediate external and internal architectural conditions, how are the dynamics of authority, skill, and education manifest? How might an architectural system provide for a prolific urban workshop and trade education typology?

Further explanation to come.

US Manufacturing News

The Wall Street Journal ran a front page article (paywall) today on the disparity between manufacturers’ needs and the skilled labor force available. It points to three effects that have created the trouble:

1. Growth in manufacturing business. Manufacturing has added 14,000 jobs this month and shown growth for the seventh month in a row. Most of my conversations these days have something to do with this fact. Go USA.

2. Retiring skilled labor boomers. The average age of skilled laborers is beginning to surpass 50 years old nationally. There is an undercurrent in industry that is fearful of permanently losing specific skills, particularly using and repairing older machinery. People tend to think that manufacturing has been reduced to programming robots. However a lot of producers rely on non-repetitive productive tasks done by human beings. And some of these tasks require skill and craft, sometimes on machines that are no longer in production. The challenge is twofold here. How do we train enough young people to do these jobs AND who will teach them?

3. US education system. We are not turning out enough strong math and science students. For years there have been reports that US students have trailed our counterparts in the world. Apparently manufacturers are beginning to feel the pain of an educational system where only 5% of degrees are in engineering. There is also an anecdote that guidance counselors would tend to dissuade bright students from vocational paths. A note here: my guidance counselor actually told me that I should think about alternatives to college. Up to now I had mocked that. Now I feel like perhaps she was half right.

Related: I am looking forward to attending Mass Made sponsored by DIGMA in a couple of weeks.

Central Baltimore and New Work

Thesis is coming into focus and this is the working map of the site. Central Baltimore is going to be my neighborhood for the next couple of months (and beyond). What can we do with so many vacant row houses? So much more to come.

HH Richardson

This semester I have my first class in a classic Harvard building, Sever Hall. Designed in 1880 by H.H. Richardson, Harvard man and all-American bad-a. Getting out of leaky Gund Hall it is a welcome relief to listen to some Mr. John Stilgoe and take in the undergraduate culture of this fine school.

[1] portrait is in the Smithsonian, photo from uncle_buddha flickr photostream.

The Trends of Preppy

An interesting analysis over at Ivy Style on the status of many leading clothing brands.

L.L. Bean is peering into the abyss. I can now only buy six items from L.L. Bean with any confidence: Norwegian Sweaters; Boat and Totes; Bean Boots; Chamois Shirts; Flannel Shirts; Ragg Socks. It is worth noting that none of these are made in China and the socks, bags and boots are all US made.

The most important part of this is that the brands on the left continue to produce in the U.S.A. (or the originating country of the brand). The direct correlation between quality and location of production is evident if you get your hands on any of the respective products. Filson is a missing label that remains on the left side of this graph for me, somewhere with Quoddy and Alden, just a touch cheaper.

Military Design

Nice photo collection of vintage military designs over at A Time to Get. Particularly like the collection of radios and how it shows the homogeneity of military device design. I have designed a couple of these artifacts and the complexity of requirements is paramount. The aesthetics of a weatherproof, radiation proof, dust proof, ruggedized object has a certain appeal. The U.S. military loves a good black box.

S&S Apron and Bags

The S&S Apron and Bags out of Brooklyn, NY make some lovely products. The obsession with material and craft possible in an object like this is so appealing. Sometimes things are just not so complicated. I need this. (photos by S&S and Hickorees Hard Goods)

Astronaut Suits