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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Will Thomson, Professor Katie Lloyd Thomas
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As enslavement and deaths at building sites make international headlines, and the deskilling, precarization, and forced migration of construction workers increases across the globe (Dainty & Loosemore, 2012), we are at the same time witnessing a growing distance – literal and legal - between architects and the sites of production for their designs. Moreover, the supposedly creative labour of architects is itself ever more divided, commodified, and outsourced. This book addresses the urgent need to advance the critical understanding of relations between architectural design and the production and labour of building, whilst recognising that in many parts of the world building takes place through self-organised processes (Neuwirth, 2005; McGuirk, 2014) and that technological innovation still depends on traditional skills (Heine & Rauhut, 2017). The research collected in this volume is part of a large, international research project, funded by the AHRC (UKRI) and FAPESP (Brazil) that has translated, debated, and is disseminating the single most sustained and rigorous enquiry into art and design from the perspective of labour in any language – that of the still active Brazilian–French historian, theorist, and architect, Sérgio Ferro. This collection will appear alongside the publication of the first English translations of his works Architecture from Below (March 2024), The Building Site and the Design (October 2024), and Construction of Classical Design (March 2025). Ferro has explored production of art and architecture from the mediaeval period through to 20th century modernism. He critiques the tendency of architectural discourse to ignore issues of labour and processes of construction (in favour of new technologies, use, aesthetics, symbolism etc.). In his view, this is no mere oversight but rather a structural necessity for maintaining the profession’s capacity to act ‘on’ and ‘over’ the building site, a necessity arising organically from the development of capitalism. Through a wide mix of disciplinary and methodological approaches, the contributions to this volume seek not only to understand and critically evaluate these mechanisms, but also to identify existing and possible forms of production, in which building processes – in themselves and not just for their products – can become catalysts for social change, in which the social and material production of space engenders autonomy, equality, justice, creativity and joy. This collection will be the first sustained English-language engagement with the theories and critiques that Ferro has developed over his long career.
Editor(s): Davies M, Thomson W, Lloyd Thomas K, De Almeida Lopes J
Publication type: Edited Book
Publication status: In Press
Series Title:
Year: 2026
Number of Volumes: 1
Number of Pages: 374
Acceptance date: 02/04/2018
Publisher: Routledge
Place Published: London
URL: https://www.routledge.com/Building-Sites-Architecture-Labour-and-Production-Studies/Davies-Thomson-LloydThomas-deAlmeidaLopes/p/book/9781032788845
Notes: Publication due 19 December 2025.
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9781032791524
