Refabricating Architecture: How Manufacturing Methodologies Are Poised to Transform Building Construction

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Preoccupation with image and a failure to look at process has led entire generations of architects to overlook transfer technologies and transfer processes. Kieran and Timberlake argue that the time has come to re-evaluate and update the basic design and construction methods that have constrained the building industry throughout its history. They skillfully demonstrate that contemporary architectural construction is a linear process, in both design and construction, where segregation of intelligence and information is the norm. They convince the reader to look at the automobile, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries to learn how to incorporate collective intelligence and nonhierarchical production structures. Those industries have proven to be progressively economic, efficient, and they yield a higher quality product while the production of buildings stagnates in the methods and practices of the nineteenth century. The transfer they envision is the complete integration of design with the craft of assembly supported by the materials scientist, the product engineer, and the process engineer, all using the tools of present information science as the central enabler.

The new architecture will not be about style, but rather about substance -- about the very methods and processes that underlie making.

In 1984 Stephen Kieran, FAIA, FAAR, and James Timberlake, FAIA, FAAR founded the firm KieranTimberlake Associates LLP, located in Philadelphia. KieranTimberlake Associates LLP has been awarded 40 design awards during the past 20 years, including two Gold Medals and two Distinguished Building Awards from the American Institute of Architects.

Stephen Kieran received his Bachelor’s degree from Yale University, magna cum laude, and his Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.

James Timberlake received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Detroit, with honors, and his Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, with honors.

Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake were recipients of the Rome Prize (in 1981 and 1983 respectively) from the American Academy in Rome, and have served as Eero Saarinen Distinguished Professor of Design at Yale University. They were awarded the inaugural 2001 Benjamin Latrobe Fellowship for architectural design research by the AIA College of Fellows. They are also the Max Fisher Chair recipients at the University of Michigan for Spring 2004. They currently serve as Adjunct Professors at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design where they lead a graduate research studio that explores the emerging interface between architecture as high art and the integration of developing technologies in materials science and product engineering.

They lecture internationally about the processes and methods that underlie transfer technologies and what has been their involvement in this new architecture. Their firm’s work has been published and featured in Manual, the Architecture of KieranTimberlake (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002); and numerous publications including Architectural Record, Cambridge University’s Architectural Research Quarterly, Interiors, Interior Design, WIRED Magazine, and The New York Times.