About the architect's craft

Abstract

This article deals firstly with the relationship between being an architect and the specific production of his work: his craft. The coincidence -underlying the notion of craft- between the architect’s work and its usefulness is set by practice, expertise in the properties of materials along with the technical rigor needed for their manufacturing processes, and, the contextual and institutional reality.
Both architecture and the architect’s craft as a collective expression of the society that produces it, entail the history of architectures. Every project enables to reflect on reality; it is validated by the disciplinary tradition of inhabiting which, in turn, is interpreted and spatialized by the building work. This paper also reconsiders the issue of craft related to thinking, action and its result, i.e., the work.
It underlines the need to address -since the beginning of the learning process- the whole of the epistemological body; the mastery in the use of skills, elements and materials; and, the permanent training on the procedures to achieve the work: composition-construction. Thus, the architectural project and the work overcome any kind of eventual break between theory and practice. Instead of representing a biased approach to the craft learning process, they stand for its specific, formative, cognitive and operative object.