Craftsmanship transformed. From the industrial box to its envelope.

Craftsmanship is the skill aiming at the design and creation of artefacts requiring a high degree of tacit knowledge as well as a highly technical and specialized equipment for their production. Craftsmanship is based on manual work, and therefore the results cannot be other than unique products. These characteristics can be found in the architectural expressions of old industrial buildings/boxes, where the crafting of their details show a poetics of materials and the technologies used, which go beyond the mere ‘ornament’ or the ‘aesthetics’. On the contrary, contemporary boxes (retail buildings, storage spaces, department stores, cinemas, etc.) made up of prefab components and fast-track construction produce the contemporary image of the ‘envelope’, made of the cladding and its frame. This reinforces the idea of surface disconnected from the interior of the building and apparently denies any form of craftsmanship. Contemporary boxes are mostly regarded as anonymous standardized products. As a matter of fact, there exists a synergy between ‘old’ crafting of factories and ‘new’ trends in crafting contemporary exteriors of buildings. Craftsmanship acts as bridge between design principles and construction techniques of such an apparent contradiction. Indeed, craftsmanship transforms and shows continuity in the technological process. Through different techniques and the use of the knowledge of architectural tradition, it experiments with the possibilities of architecture to evoke and narrate. Therefore, it becomes the ‘transforming device’ generating new ornaments in architectural design.