5 The technology of making

Each building element needs not only to be coherent and a living, positively-shaped structure. For the whole to be truly a living structure, to make the building truly alive, each building element also needs to be finely adapted to its detailed position. And this needs to be true of every building element.
Thus in a living structure, the microstructure of the building must work in two ways. It is the microstructure which creates the possibility of living structure in the elements. And it is the microstructure which allows the whole to become well-made and well-functioning, because this (and only this) allows each element to be adapted — in dimension, shape, color, detail — to its position in the whole so as to support that particular unique place within the whole.
Thus architecture entirely depends for its living character on the congruence, harmoniousness, and completeness of the micro-structure, the fine structure, the details. In other sciences a similar observation would be almost commonplace. We know this very well in the case of organisms. We know that a leaf, a tree, or a human body could not work at all if the fine structure — the cells, proteins, molecules, and cell microstructure — were not in order. That goes without saying. And it is clear that the fabrication of these elements must follow a process which allows fine-scale adaptation to occur.

This is a compelling argument that — when translated to software — could have interesting consequences. In software, it has long been impossible to fully understand the full stack of technologies a piece of software runs on top of, which means we are not in a position to really know our “material” that well. We are dependent on things we do not fully understand. In a way, this does criticize the current situation of too complex stacks and would suggest a simplification or rebuilding of the foundation we build upon.

In a building the same is true. A building can have real life only when the building details have life and are adapted, in their fine structure, to the life of the building.
Much contemporary architecture has lots sight of this point. Buildings are made of prefabricated panels, two-by-fours, sheetrock boards, concrete panels, steel joints, sheets of glass. All of these are practical and wonderful inventions, from a point of view of cost, time, and efficiency of erection. But they are not practical or wonderful when looked at as elements capable of adaptation or fine tuning, which contribute to the living microstructure of the building.

We seek, therefore, a technology in which each part can be shaped according to its position in the building: and this shaping cannot be known ahead of time but only as a result of the process of unfolding. Such a technology of making is a theoretical idea which has its roots in hand-craft, but extends far beyond hand-craft to apply to the largest buildings. It is a philosophy, a way of organizing and managing the relation of control, decision-power, craft, and technique so that a large building, as much as a small one, can be viewed as a biological process in which each component is able to find its right shape and its right dimensions according to its position in the whole and according to the contribution it makes to the whole — something not predictable at the time of drawing or design.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/15 All Building as Making#