Superposition
Tolerance
& Transformation
Saturday—Sunday 20—21 Jan 2024
Asia Society, Miller Theatre
Former Explosives Magazine
9 Justice Drive,
Admiralty, Hong Kong
This symposium, organised by Donn Holohan and Elspeth Lee, aimed to foster an alternative dialogue on the future of architectural production, centred on tolerance and encompassing both its technical and more humane interpretations. It is a response to the increasingly specialised and technocratic nature of discussions of the future of the construction industry, and its apparent inability to address an unprecedented environmental crisis.
Within this context, tolerance has become synonymous with error—an acceptable allowance that is a consequence of our inability to match a simulated geometry. This position reflects a presupposition that architecture exists firstly as a Platonic ideal, a form which is then translated imperfectly into a material world. This mode of conceptualizing, planning, and realizing architecture frames the process of translation as a challenge to overcome, with the ultimate goal being to reduce tolerances and to bridge the gap between the abstract and the real.
However, tolerance may also be considered not as an error but as a framework, a way to name and later incorporate uncertainty, transformation, and change into a non-linear process of design and making. If thought about in this way—in terms of reconciliation—the dichotomy that exists between making and thinking begins to dissolve, and with it, the preconceived form. Instead, new ways to define outcomes and to manage this process must be sought, opening the possibility for the acceptance and integration of the non-standard and the improvisational quality of craft and community-led practices.
This is critical. The urgent need to transform our approach to building necessitates the development of new frameworks that prioritize and facilitate experimentation, as well as accommodate unconventional materials and approaches to construction.
The building industry is globalized, highly financialized, and primarily factory-based. The universality of this system and the economics underpinning it have engendered a remarkable homogeneity of construction methods across the world. The ubiquitous concrete block and steel section, the cladding panel, and the plywood sheet all define ways of making, and shape a material supply chain that spans continents. In almost all parts of the world, architectural production has become codified and formatted as a linear process, where design must precede the act of building. Within this system, material has become passive, seen primarily as a medium through which abstract concepts are made manifest. The idea that the process of making may influence or change initial positions, concepts, and briefs, and therefore final outcomes, is considered antithetical.
This symposium brings together a diverse community of architects, designers, and makers who, through their respective practices, are pioneering approaches to architecture that are based on the need for new, more socially engaged, and equitable models of production, the conservation of regional ecologies and craft, the reappropriation of industrial tools and ways of making, or the expansion of the boundaries of the traditional design phase. Their work demonstrates ways of re-evaluating and redefining the role of the architect in a time of disarray.
This symposium, hosted by the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, was made possible by the generous support of the Design Trust