ABSTRACT
The fetishisation of precision in architectural production suggests that precise can never be precise enough. ‘No artchitect or specifier can realistically claim to produce perfect work,’ Walter Rosenfeld inadvertently demonstrated in Progressive Architecture, ‘and contract documents are rarely without some omission, discrepancy, or some other flaw, though perfection is certainly the goal.’ Traces of cultural specificity, of inherited and passed down ambiguities and human errors remain present throughout all aspects of architectural production, despite all attempts over the last 200 years to attain certainty through the precise instruction. The pursuit here of certainty through delegation of decision-making to others not only disempowers the architect, but P. Tehrani argues, significant theoretical problems. A definition of architectural quality as emerging out of trust and discretion, rather than from the measurement of exact alignment between concept and construction is explored, too, in David Pye’s The Nature and Art of Workmanship.
