Dr Luciano Cardellicchio will present a paper entitled “The Italian Job”: the construction industry in Italy between standardization and craft approach at the 11th AHRA Conference which will be held from the 13th until the 15th of November at the University of Newcastle. (www.industriesofarchitecture.org/)
In Italy, the construction industry is the most important economic sector due to its contribution to the GDP and for the number of jobs it provides. However, this sector is still dominated by small to medium-sized enterprises, whose organization and production are strongly characterised by a craft approach. Coexistence between artisanal practice and industrial management has always accompanied the evolution of the construction industry in Italy. Therefore construction remains deeply rooted in a variety of small specialisations rarely managed together with an integrated approach.
By comparison, the aim of this paper is to highlight how the “Italian” traditional approach has been shaped by mass-customized techniques for three non-standard buildings: the new Herziana Library by Juan Navarro Baldeweg; the MAXXI museum by Zaha Hadid and the Dives in Misericordia Church by Richard Meier.
Image – Richard Meier, Dives in Misericordia Church, Rome, 2003. Picture from the building site. (Photo by the author)
