The architecture of error : matter, measure, and the misadventures of precision

325 Pages·2014·9.738 MB·English

by  Hughes, Francesca

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MATTER, MEASURE,
AND THE MISADVENTURES I
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OF PRECISION
E
FRANCESCA HUGHES
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E

THE MIT PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
© 2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hughes, Francesca.
The architecture of error : matter, measure, and the
misadventures of precision / Francesca Hughes.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-52636-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Architectural design. 2. Measurement.
3. Architects—Psychology. I. Title.
NA2750.H845 2014
720.1´08—dc23
2013050792

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Ursula, Solomon, and Jonathan

CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
INTRODUCTION 1
False Economy: Precision and Error in Architecture
1 ERROR AND PRECISION 17
The Troping of Precision
HOOKE’S NEEDLE AND SUTHERLAND’S WINDOW
2 ERROR AND MATTER 45
Anatomy of an Accident: Aristotle in the Garden
HEPWORTH’S QUARRY
3 ERROR AND MATERIALITY I 77
Room for Doubt: Instrumentalism, Inference,
and Ideology
GALLAUDET’S DODO
4 ERROR AND MATERIALITY II 113
Abdicated Measures: Liquid Automation,
Anxiety, and the Politics of Optimization
AXEL’S STREAM
5 ERROR AND REPRESENTATION 139
The Blind Spot and the Bridge
MATTA-CLARK’S JIGSAW
6 ERROR AND REPRODUCTION I 163
Miniature Giants: Colonial Adventures in
Entropy and Scale
SCHRÖDINGER’S DOLLS’ HOUSE
7 ERROR AND REPRODUCTION II 193
The Copying Machine Fails: The Double Helix
and the Loop
PEREC’S CORRIDOR
8 ERROR AND SURFACE 217 Postscript 247
Counted Away: Indexicality and the Sublimation Notes 249
of Ornament Bibliography 287
(HERMINE) WITTGENSTEIN’S RADIATOR Index 297

PREFACE
To declare a single point of origin for this book would be both a falsehood and a denial of
the complex alchemy of research. But sometime before the beginning, an intellectual crisis
of sorts was instrumental in setting it in motion. It arose as I found myself sandwiched
between two material processes: one I had zero (conscious) control over and one I should
have had total control over, but I didn’t—it kept eluding me. I was sixteen weeks pregnant
and I was surveying a fifteenth-century building in France to which I had had to return to
remeasure as my previous dimensions, when drawn up, left me with plans that flared over
each other and sections that slid and twisted as they refused to align and correlate. I was
irritated. No amount of precision, it seemed, could fix these unruly walls and floors to the
page. I began to eye the matter that made up these stone walls and tree-beamed ceilings
with some caution, and not without a touch of paranoia. Why was it so unreadable, or at
least unwritable? Had my measuring tape been switched for Wittgenstein’s rubber ruler?
Or worse: what to do with the acute fear that form itself was absent, that I was somehow
dealing directly with matter, absurdly trying to measure, plot, and calculate the Platonic
nightmare of its formless morass? An argument on materiality and matter I had formu-
lated a week previously in preparation for a student seminar unraveled to nothing at the
back of my mind. Meanwhile, in my pocket, an ultrasound printout showed a weather front
of white specks, a lining amassed and waiting. Beside this, two clouds of whiteness had
drifted away and settled next to each other, unmistakable: two perfectly formed, crossed,
tiny feet. The very processes I was struggling with, in my teaching, in my practice, were
unfurling perfectly within my own material interior.
It was very clear what needed to be done to this building. I had the whole canon in
my bag and was ready to wreak revenge on these disobedient walls. I took my drawings
back to London and, with 1,200 kilometers of conveniently abstracting distance and the
utterly reliable precision of my then still 0.18 technical pen and immaculate white drawing
board, performed architecture on this recalcitrant body. At the same time I started to feel
a somersaulting in my belly, unimaginable choreographies of material life. I glimpsed the
utter precariousness of my architectural actions and reached for the security of a finer pen.
Something fundamental about being pregnant crucially interrupted my faith in the
stability of relations between form and matter, precision and error, that architects believe
they must assume if they are to do their job. My doubt centered itself around the question
of material error in the production of form. The finer pen was a crutch; it could no more
shelter my interrogating measurement from the evasive answers of those lumpy walls
than can the enormous computational capacity we now bring to bear on digital fabrication.
As I glimpsed precision straying so wildly from its declared duty, and by implication, from
veracity, my practice and teachings as an architect lost (or perhaps found) their bearings.