ABSTRACT
In our quest for form-making we have long been aware of the role of technology; in the eighteenth century Marc-Antoine Laugier, the celebrated critic, declared that technique was the prime cause of architectural expression, a proposition developed in the nineteenth century and indeed, adopted as a central plank of modernism in the twentieth. But the proposition has much deeper roots; primitive builders looked around them for available building materials which, when assembled, could provide shelter.
