Howard Davis: Post-Industrial Craftsmanship

Website: Communiqué Autumn Lecture Series

This lecture describes how a contemporary notion of craftsmanship may lead to a twenty-first century, post-industrial vernacular. Such a vernacular, that may involve both advanced technology and local control, is consistent with contemporary social movements that are seeking autonomy and identity. Examples at different scales include settlement planning at the grassroots, digital fabrication and visualisation, and new professional relationships between architects, clients and builders.

Howard Davis is Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon. He is co-author, with Christopher Alexander and others, of The Production of Houses, author of The Culture of Building and of the forthcoming Living Over the Store: Architecture and Local Urban Life.

His research is on the relationship between urban structure and the local economy, building types that foster economic innovation, and craft in design and building. His teaching includes design studios involving functionally complex buildings in dense urban contexts, introductory graduate design and seminars in vernacular architecture and urban building types.

Davis is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Architectural Education and Urban Morphology, was the founding co-editor of Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum and in 2009 was named Distinguished Professor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.