The Architecture of Error: Matter, Measure and the Misadventures of Precision
The Architecture of Error: Matter, Measure and the Misadventures of Precision
"In The Architecture of Error, Francesca Hughes argues that behind the architect's acute fetishization of redundant precision lies a special fear of physical error. What if we were to consider the pivotal cultural and technological transformations of modernism to have been driven not so much by the causes its narratives declare, she asks, as by an unspoken horror of loss of control over error, material life, and everything that matter stands for? Written during the context of emergent New Feminist Materialism and the Imperfect Turn and as a counter to rising digital solutions in the form of parametric optimisation, Hughes' analysis traces the rising intolerance of material vagaries—from the removal of ornament to digitalized fabrication—that produced the blind rejection of organic materials, the proliferation of material testing, and the rhetorical obstacles that blighted cybernetics. Why is it, she asks, that the more we cornered physical error, the more we feared it?"