RETOOLING BUILDINGS AND MACHINES

摘要

The relationships between buildings and machines have always defined the fields of design and construction. More than 2,000 years ago, in the first treatise on architecture, Vitruvius dedicated all of the final volume to machines. Since then, arguably the entire history of construction has centered on the movement away from handicraft toward progressive degrees of mechanization. Today, mechanization, the replacement of hand labor, is increasingly giving way to automation, the replacement of human labor altogether. Below are four fundamental relationships between buildings and machines. As automation becomes more prominent, it is changing these relationships dramatically.