The Production of Technological Ressenblence

7/28/2019 The Production of Technological Ressenblence

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A m y S l a t o n

Style/Type/Standard: The Production

of Technological Resemblance

IN T R O D U C T IO N

T his essay reconsiders a famous stylistic absence: the departure of orn am ent at ion, tra-

ditiona l design motifs, and idiosy ncratic profile fr om a broad swath of A me r ican ar chi-

tecture after 1900. T hat these features of earlier architectural sty ling are missing fr om

many commer cial, civ ic, and large scale re sidential buildings erected over the course

of the twentieth century is evident to the casual observer. It is the notion of absence

itself that I want to examine. It has served as the primary analytic instrument for his-

torians w ho ex amine the roots of modernist ar chitecture in A merica. T he initial

embrace of austerity and unifor mity by many A me ric an builders betw een 19 00 and1930, when it is considered at all, is treated by historians as a renunciation of stylis-

tic self consciousness. Perhaps because ut ilita r ian building s of this period were fre-

quently designed by engineers rather than architects, this early functionalism (a

term I will examine) has come to represent a sort of default mode for architecture

engaged when building designers choose to serve commerce rather than the more

traditional master of high culture. Historians grant later manifestations of functional-

ism (the mid century buildings designed by architects) greater aesthetic sophistication

but attribute this deve lopment to A mer ican receptivity to International Style design

precepts imported from Europe rather than to any indigenous appreciation of simpli-

fied for m.1T he origins of the tw entieth century A mer ican com mitment to the stan-

dardized undecorated building re main w holly negativ e phenomena rooted in the


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T H E P R O D U C T IO N O F T E C H N O L O G I C A L R E S EM B L A N C E 7 9

conservation of effort and money, the rejection of expressive possibility, the paring

away of inte ntion.

T his paper recasts these absences as presence: of desig ning engineers inte ntio nalit y

and authority, and thus of cultural meaning and social consequence for utilitarian

buildings. By looking at the first expressions of this building mode in the United States

after 1900 the thousands of undecorate d, virt ually identica l concrete frame factories

that swelled industrial neig hborhoods betw een 1900 and 1930 I w ill identify a com-

plex of positive forces be hind the A mer ican embrace of utilitar ian building design. Far

from being the products of technical personnel answering the demands of industry

w ith some pre ordained set of des ig n solutions (pre ordained by w hat or w hom, we

w ould hav e to ask), the factor ies were cr eated w it h tr emendous awareness of cultural

and market forces. T heir appearance not only prefigures that of much later A mer ican

architecture, but reflects the potent ial o f a cultura l enterprise here, architecture to

be mutually determinative w ith tec hnology and commerce, and thereby very directly

a cause of social change. It is this relationship that makes the idea of an absence so

unsatisfactory as an ex planation for A mer ican modernism: it elides w hat can only be

called the polit ica l genesis of these artifacts.

To retrieve the historical meaning of functionalist industrial architecture, we must

first see these buildings as ambitious examples of industrial production. In many

respects the factory buildings were like the goods made within: undifferentiated in

form and produced with modern, streamlined procedures. Catalogs put out by factorybuilders between 1900 and 1930 show a remarkably homogenous collection of offerings,

the buildings vary ing in size but in few other ways (see Figures 1 and 2 ). T he ty pical

reinforced concrete factory b uilding erected betw een 1900 a nd 1930 was rectangular,

usually from 50 to 75 feet wide and from 100 to 900 feet long. Most were from four to

eight stories high, without brick cladding or ornamentation to disguise their rein

forced concrete skele ton frames. W her e or name nta tion was used it was usually in the

form of a simple comice, or very occasionally, a tower that housed stairways and bath-

rooms. S o great is their uniformity that factory buildings of virtually identical appear-

ance held industries ranging from shoe manufacturing to hose weaving, from theproduction o f rubber gloves to the processing of breakfast cereals. T he factories display

an ingenious application of contemporary tenets of industrial standardization.

But while the economic imperatives of mass production may have contributed to

the popularity of this building style for its builders a nd buyers, they are not sufficient to

explain the proliferation of these structures. As Reyner Banham points out, builders of

hotels and hospitals of this period also sought economies but those buildings look very

diffe rent fr om the factories, and, we mig ht add, from one another .2 Functionalis m,

w hich I take here to me an an ex pressiv e emphasis on the char acteris tics of mecha -

nized production (simplicity and repetition of form) is similarly unhelpful as an

ex planatory term. A more f oundational question must be asked: H ow did uniformity


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8 0

T H E A M E R J C A N T H R E A D C O M P A N Y

at Fall River, Massachusetts

One of many Aberthaw buildings for this famous conccrn

M O H A W K C A R P E T M I L L S

at Amsterdam, New York

Where large and heavy seamless rugs arc woven

Figure 1. Illustration of factories from Built by Aberthaw, Catalog of the

Aberthaw Construction Company , Boston, Massachusetts, 1926.


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r

8 1

T H E S T A N L E Y W O R K S

at New Britain, Connecticut

Figure 2. More factories, from B uilt by Aberthavu, Catalog of the

Aberthaw Construction Company , Boston, Massachusetts, 1926.


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8 2 A M Y S L A T ON

become an acceptable idiom in building design? The embrace of type itself remains to be

explicated.

T his task involves unpack ing the occurrence of resemblance or commonalityamong manufactured artifacts approaching a disagg regation of the not ion o f style.

T his is a project that scholars such as Sv etlana A lpers , A rno ld Dav idson, and Irene

W in te r hav e ide ntif ied as a ma tt er of establishing his tor ical conte x tualization for

modes of repr es entation. For W int e r e specially the g oal is to presume no single reason

for stylistic associations among objects but rather to pinpoint the sources and effects of

style by correlating patterns of expression with the experiences of producers. Those

experiences can include te chnical aspects of design activity. Mic hael Bax andall, in

his unparalleled link ing of expressive style and ex perience, e x plicitly connects repre-

sentation to perceptions of technical skill and knowledge (as deployed in renderingor measurement, for example) shared by artists and patrons. He thus connects art

making , by way of technical knowledge, also to patterns of influence and prestige in a

g ive n social setting. T his multilev el analysis of expressive conv ention as productive

process, sy mbolic form, and means o f social org anization serves as a model for my

exploration of architectural change.4

W e are encourag ed throug h such an approach, as S v etla na A lpe rs re cog nized some

time ago, to study artifacts without choosing in advance the parts played by the indi-

vidual maker, his community, certain established modes of perceiving the world, or

the viewer.5 Considered i n such dy namic terms, the ce lebration of type as embod-

ied in the standardized factory building s emerges as a genre of resemblance w ith a

particular social history. It is a history that reflects at least two fundamental social ten-

sions of mass production. First, the factory designers and builders were offering a

product tha t conformed to prev ailing norms of industrial manage ment. T he rein

forced concrete factories were s implified and s tandardized objects t hat ex ploited

economies of scale, savings deriving from the repetition of forms and processes. But

this economization put its suppliers at risk of obsolescence: Would not true standard-

ization do away with the need for experts, for the designers and planners themselves?

To protect their standing w ith clientele, f actory designers and builders cast their own

work the wor k of craf ting and im plement ing standards, of ty pology as a rare and

elev ated competence. A status the n accrued to the standardizers, and their occupa-

tional authority was bolstered in the competitive wor ld of industr ial operations. T he

blunt functionalis m o f the r einforced concrete factory building s expressed the heig ht-

ened status o f new tec hnical knowledg e to a receptive industrial market.

W e mus t ask, of course, w hy this epis te molog ical e le v ation of ty polog y wor ked

w hy the designers and builde rs found in indus tr ialists a w il lin g audience for their lof ty

self identification, for their services, and f or the highe r fees such specialized servicesmight command. Here we find the second, and perhaps larger, political significance of


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T H E P R O D U C T IO N O F T E C H N O L O G IC A L R E S E MB L A N C E 8 3

functionalist design. T he elevated status o f standardizers doveta iled w ith a vast

redistribution of skills, credit, and opportunity in the industrial workplace after 1900,

by w hich many rank and file workers found themselves laboring w ithout intelle ctual

reward or occupational mobility; others, like the factory designers, ascended to secure

planning or manag erial roles. Factory owners shared the s tratified vis ion of productive

labor embodied in t he builders self concept. T he s ame patterns o f social change

undergirded the production (i.e., mass production) of a modern, utilitarian architec-

ture, and industrialists enthusias m f or a f unctionalist building style.

Design, always a blend of social and cultural operations, is here specifically a prod-

uct of and a signifier of technical expertise, each role s upporting the other in a n inv o-

lution of technical practice a nd reputation. T he new f actory buildings may appear to

have been, and indeed were, simpler in form than their predecessors, but standardiza-

tion was as richly determined and promising a stylistic choice for its promoters as more

individualized aes thetic gestures were for co nv en tion al ar chitects. T his essay considers

the origins and consequences o f that c om mitm ent to uniformity .6

P R O D U C T IO N O F T H E R E IN F O R C E D C O N C R E T E

F A C T O R Y B U I L D I N G

To arrive at this historic co ntex tualization of architectural uniform ity we need first to

map the ways in w hich labor conceptual and physical was organized in the cre-ation of these buildings . A handful of prom inent architects created notable innov a-

tions in reinforced concrete factory building technology and design after 1890. Ernest

Ransome 7 and A lber t K ahn,8 in particular, hav e garnered the atte ntion of historians.

Other architectural firms that achieved celebrity for their industrial commissions in

these years include Purcell and Elmslie, Pond and Pond, and Schmidt, Garden and

Mar tin. However, reinforced concrete factories were often built w ithout the inv olv e-

ment of well known architects or any architects at all. T he vast majority of these

buildings were designed and erected w ithin a world of comme rcial transactions rather

than cutting edge e ngineering or name architects. Lesser known firms learned of new

technologies and designs through trade publications and professional organizations

and through patents taken out by leading designers, and then disseminated the struc-

tures to locales around the country.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, services of the factory designers

reached the mark et in three ways. T he industr ialist commiss ioning a plan t could

employ his own forces for all construction work. He would in this case enlist an engi-

neer or architect to draw up plans, hire subcontractors for specialized work, and

assume all res ponsibilities for erecting a plant.9 A second optio n inv olv ed the factory

owner soliciting plans and specifications for a factory building from an engineering


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firm and the n s ubmitting them to prospective building concerns or g eneral contractors

for bids. T he eng ineering firm would coordinate the work of the w inning contractors.

T his approach was substantially easier on t he ow ner tha n ta king on supervisory tasks

himself, but s till entailed a fairly close inv olv eme nt.

A third opt io n remov ed the building ow ner mos t tho roug hly from the cons tr uction

process and showed the greatest growth in popularity among industrialists who bought

factories at this time. T his was the hiring of building firms t hat incorporated an engi-

neering division equipped to design factory buildings and a construction division able

to erect the buildings from start to finish. Such firms usually maintained separate

departments for promotion, drafting, estimating, accounting, purchasing, expediting,

and constr uction. W it h these facilities a building f irm could select the best site for a

client after having its own staff study local geographic, supply, and labor conditions,and the n coordinate every aspect of construction from ex cav ation to final painting.

A num be r of the eng ine ering firms tha t operated alo ng these line s were very suc-

cessful. Perhaps best known today are the international concerns Lockwood, Greene

Co mpany and S tone & Webster (see Figure 3). O the r firms of slightly smaller size per-

formed similar services on a regional basis, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast

wher e the g row th of ma nuf actur ing industr ies was subs tantial betw ee n 19 00 and 1930.

T heir functiona l departme ntalization made the eng ineering/building firms k in to

other s tre amlined mass production industr ies of the day and no doubt helped create

their appeal for industr ial clients. N ot only were the complex ities of dealing w ith bids

and subcontractors eliminated for factory owners who turned to the modem building

firms, but the costs added as each contr acto r a nd subcontractor sought profit were also

removed. In his 1931 report on A me ric an construction trades, W illia m Haber summa-

rized the advantages that the integrated engineering/building firm held for factory

owners. Purchasing, planning, and expediting were each conducted by a specialized

department with the latest methods and machinery. Such unification and centraliza-

tion allowe d the multi function construction company to ex ploit economies of scale

and the emerging art o f coordinating production tasks.10

Significantly, Haber concludes his discussion of the integrated engineering/building

firms w ith a further indic tme nt of smaller scale methods of project manag ement:

No study has been made of the amount of time lost by workmen through failure

in material deliveries, but from the meager evidence available it seems to be

tremendous. W it h the s ame modern scientific org anization in charge of con-

struction, the contrast between its operations and those of the broker contrac-

tor becomes more str iking .11

It is not simply the large size of the integrated firms that brings them success, but their

scientific nature; in Habers use of the w ord broker there is an in tim at ion ofundeserved


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Paramount Knitting Co., Kankakee, IU.Combined warehouse and manu facturin g pace. Ba il11914

A lu mi nu m Goods Mf g . Co ., New ar k, N . J .Di str ibut ing ir arehouse and branch factory. Buill 1916

Mc A v itv . T ., & Sons, L td .................................................................................St. Jo hn, N. B .Mc Nc al Ma chin er y Co ............................................................................................J op lin , Mo.Me cha nic al Ru bbe r Co .......................................................................................... Chicag o, 111.

Mer chants T er minal War ehouse Co ......................................................Ne w Be dford, Mass .Mon tg ome ry W ar d & Co................................................................................. S t. Pa ul, Min n.Mo rga n & \ Vr isht...............................................................................................De tr oit , Mi ch .Na sh ua M fg . C o................................................................................................. Nas hua, N . H .Nassa u Sme lting & Re fining Co ...................................................................T ottenv ille, N . Y .Naum kc ag S tea m Co tto n Co ...............................................................................Salem, Mass.New Bedford Cotton Mills Corp............................................................New Bedford, Mass.

New Departure Mfg. Co.....................................................................................Bristol, Conn.New England Waste Co......................................................................................Revere, Mass.N. V . Be lting & Pa ck ing Co ............................................................................... Pass aic, N. J .Ot is Co.. T he .................................................1898..................................................War e, Mass .Pacific Mills (Ha mpto n De par tme nt)...........................................................C olumbia. S. C .Pacific Mills (Pr int Work s De par tm en t)..................................................... Lawr ence, Mass.Pacolet Manuf act uring C o..........................1900................................................Pacole t, S. C.Pa lmol iv e Co., T he ........................................................................................Milw auk ee , Wis .Pa ra m o unt K ni t t ing C o ............................... ................................... ................... K ank ak ee . 111.Pass aic P ri nt W or k s .....................................1890 ..............................................Pass aic, N . J .

Pepperell Manufacturing Co............................................................................Biddeford, Me.P ick et t Cot ton M il ls ....................................................................................Hig h Po int, N . C.Pl ante rs & Mf r s. Wa rehouse Co rp................................................................... Ba ltimor e, M d.Poe, F. W MMan ufac tur ing C o ...................1895.......................................... Greenville, S. C.Quin eba ug Co ................................................................................................. Danie ls on, Co nn.Rice, Barton & Fales Machine & Iron Co..................................................Worcester, Mass.Saco Lowell Sho ps ........................................ '. ................................................... Lowell, Mass.Sta te Boa rd of Contr ol of Wis con sin ...............................................................Wa upun, Wis .Sta ten Island Sh ipbuilding Co ............................................................P or t R ichm ond, N . Y .St udeba ke r Corpo ra tion, T he .......................................................................Sout h Be nd. Ind.

U. S . C ar tr idg e C o...............................................................................................Ma ure r, N . J .V as sie & Co m pa ny . Lt d ................................................................................... St . J ohn, N. B .W al ker . W m H . , C o ... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ...... ..... ...... ...... ...... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..B uff al o, N . Y .

Massachusetts Cotton Mills. Lowell, Mass

Cotton storehouse of 40,000 bales' capac ity. Bu ilt 1909

Naumkcag Steam Cotton Company, Salem. Man.

Concrete storehouse buill 1914 follow ing Ute Salem fire

Figure 3. Illustrations of factories and partial list of buildings erected bythe Lockwood, Greene Company, from their 1925 A nnual Report.


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8 6 A M Y S L A T O N

profit. He later associates the work of small firms and independent contractors with

excessive compe tition tha t puts a prem ium on astuteness and disloyalty rather than

engineer ing sk ill.12This disparagement of independent contractors and small building concerns was

not unique to Haber. T he makers of one brand of steel reinforcing for concrete adver-

tised in 1920 that they would not license contractors or materials dealers. They

w ished to place their products in the hands of ack now le dg ed ex perts only . T he prac-

tice of obtaining free plans for factory buildings from steel suppliers and even from

insurance companies was also losing fav or among factory owners. T he er ection of the

efficient, ec onomical factory building was coming to be associated with firms tha t were

at once specialists in this type of product and comprehensive, integrated enterprises

able to ha ndle every aspect of factory c onstr uction.13

K N O W L E D G E IN T H E M A R K E T P L A C E :

T H E C O N S T R U C T IO N S IT E

T o unders tand the success of the factory building firms, we need to see these chara c-

teristics as parts of a consciously purs ued program. T he identity of the reinforced

concrete building firm was a doubled one. It contained a promise of rationalized,

streamlined operations that would bring clients efficiency and savings. Such savings

were predic at ed on a min ut e and hie rarchical div is io n of labor, as mig ht be found in

the most caref ully org anized manufa cturing enterprises of the day. B ut the r eputation

of concrete constr uction firms also held intimat ions of a rarified and subjective k now l-

edge about factory building a body of knowledge not s ubject to division. T his dou-

bled character reflected the builders devotion to a particular social organization of

labor that not only retained a place for their own expertise, but also represented a

social vision shared by the industrialists who sought their services. We will first con-

sider the industrialized features of concrete factory construction, and then the claimsthat seemed to bring factory builders an im munity to the very des killing and routiniza

tion they advocate d for other forms of tec hnical labor.

In many ways the conditions of concrete construction resembled those of contem-

porary factory operation far more closely than they did conventional building meth-

ods. In the early part of the twentieth century, the most common procedures for

reinforced concrete constr uction invo lv ed bring ing the raw materials of concrete

to the cons truction site, mix ing them there to create the pourable me dium, and then

filling reusable wooden or metal molds, or forms, that had metal reinforcing rods

pre positioned w ithin the m. W he n the concrete in t he forms had hardened, theforms were removed and relocated, and a successive floor or section of the building

was er ected in a v ir tuall y uninterrupt ed sequence. T his procedur e echo ed emer ging


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T H E P R O D U C T IO N O F T E C H N O L O G I C A L R E SE M B L A N CE 8 7

methods of factory production that sought to replace batch, or unit based, pro duction

w it h continuous flow processes.

Further, as had rapidly become c omm on practice in ma nufacturing contex ts, a div i-

sion of physical a nd conceptual labor emerged i n r einforced concrete cons truction.

O n the majority of concrete building projects the actual handling of materials the

ere ction of forms, the preparation and place ment of re inforcing rods, and the delivery,

distribution, mix ing, and pouring of concrete was accomplished by a large body of

relatively untrained workers, distinct (with the exception of some carpenters who

built wooden forms) from the established body of experienced (and often unionized)

wor kers comm only employ ed in mas onr y and w ood constr uction at this time . Super-

vising these workers were managers employed by building firms or contractors. These

managers might themselves be hierarchically divided into field supervisors who were

in tur n directed by office based designers and administrator s, but how ev er org anized

internally this conceptual realm remained a purview distinct from the physical labor

of concrete c onstruction.

Carrying forward the rationalization process, builders gradually removed many

aspects of concrete constr uction from the building site after 1 900. T he cons truction of

forms and assembly of reinforcing rods increasingly were taken over by outside suppli-

ers.14 T hese aux iliary businesses, located of f the c ons truc tion site, mass produced

materials that previously had been individually fabricated in the course of building.

Some intricate types of forms and reinforcement continued to be fabricated by work-

men o n the buildi ng site, but e noug h were standardized and mass produced to effect

substantial economies. T hese products were of ten calle d systems by the ir promoters,

suggesting that their use also would save builders the conceptual tasks of understand-

ing and planning the use of reinforcement.1

A second set o f manag eria l init ia tiv es in reinforced concrete constr uction after 19 00

achieved the tightened control of work that remained on the site, and reiterates the

close relationship of productive process and social vision on the part of construction

firm managers. T he daily superv ision of construction forces was broug ht about throug h

the use of elaborate administr ative procedures rang ing fr om mnemo nically codedwork orders to studies of w orkers hyg ie ne habits .16B uild ing fir m operators als o lavis hed

attention on problems of quality control on the construction site. Because concrete

construction was operated as a flow process, costs incurred by faulty or wasted materi-

als could accelerate rapidly. From its inception as a favored material for large commer-

cial projects, concrete was subject to te sting in the field. T he scope and means of testing

derived fr om university based materials s cience programs. A cademics, w ork ing as

members of professional associations and as paid consultants to the building and mate-

rials industries, dev eloped an elaborate body of field ins pection and tes ting procedures.

In k eeping w ith the building firms moder n manager ial approach, tasks of qualitycontrol r emained always outside the purview of the concrete laborer. On ly consulting


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and mid level salaried engineers performed the w ork of ceme nt and concrete testing,

visiting the site as needed. Building firm managers deemed quality control to be largely

a conceptual, ra ther tha n phys ical, tas k.17So was the majority of work defined and organized on the concrete building site of

the early tw entie th century. T echnical knowledge was treated by building firm opera-

tors as a commodity. No technical task escaped division and delegation in the firms

search for fast, efficient, predicta ble factory cons truct ion ex cept, that is, those tasks

that firm owners and operators claimed as their own. T heir work, their technical

knowledge, somehow occupied a universe impervious to the economizing, reductive

trends of industrial routinization. Industrialists seeking new plants accepted this

descr iption of factory building expertise and w illing ly paid the costs of employing its

claimants. Standardization stopped here. We can now ask why and how this protec-tive encapsulation of factory building expertise came to be.

K N O W L E D G E IN T H E MA R K E T P L A C E :

T H E B U S IN E S S O F B U IL D IN G

T he essence of the hig h status obta ined by the f actory building experts was a further

commodification of knowledge and technique, but one that strategically defined their

w or k as necess ar ily co mpr ehensiv e, or, indiv is ible . W hile the y def ined and stratified

the labor needed to erect factory buildings, the firms successfully combatted the idea

that standardization or mechanization of construction could effectively be applied

w it ho ut their ov er sig ht. T his inv ol v ed celebrating , in a n umbe r of ways, the subje ctiv -

ity of standardization as an intellectual project. As we will see, in achieving their

monopoly of reinforced concrete factory constr uction through such means, the

experts also brought about the hig h cultural v aluat ion of their product: the functiona l-

ist industrial building.

T he concrete builders cam paig n for secure occupat ional status too k the f orm of a

vast promo tional initiative . O ne major tactic used by the integrated factory buildingfirms was to distinguish the expertise of the specialized factory designer and builder

from t hat of the building s owner. O ne engineer re minded manufacturers in 1911 that

w he n the y selected es tablished eng ineer s to desig n and er ect the ir pla nts, it w ould be

clear that the creative w ork of the industrial engineer has to do w ith such matters as

are no t usually included in the r outine ex perience and w ork o f ow ner or operator.18

T he founder of a large factor y engineering/building f irm, prom oting his c ompany in

1919, cast the relationship between industrialist and industrial engineer as similar to

that of client a nd attorney. T he analogy suggests that the knowledge of the engineer

was necessary to ensure ef fectiv e business operation, of the hig hest profes sional cal-iber, and most interestingly in this sphere of otherwise routinized production, not a

matter of re petition (see Figure 4 ). 19


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8 9

Pertinent Facts

WE originated this service.

W e have fif teen years ex per ience inIndustrial Structures.

W e eliminate the general contractor and save

you his prof it .

W e take only one commis s ion, and that ispaid to us by our client.

W e do not sell plans . W e have no standar dplans.

W e have nev er desig ned tw o of our plantsalike, and never expect to.

Our service is sold as a whole and not in part.

Our references are the firms listed on theopposite paee and many others for whom wehave built plants, or prepared reports, madeinvestigations or appraisals.

Our whole story may be summarized in thestatement that we give you a ma x imum bu ild -ing in a minimum time and at a minimumcost.

F r a n k D. Chase, Inc.Industrial Engineers

645 N. Michiga n A ve ., Chicago W hitehall B! dg., New Y ork

a

Figure 4 Frank D. Chase, A Better Way to Build Your New Plant(promotional publication), 191 9.


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This meant that effective factory construction required, at the very least, a certain

level of ex pertise. C lay ton Mayers, an e ngineer for the successful A ber thaw Construe

tion Company, described in detail the possible errors that could occur in beam design.

He war ned of excessive and inappropriate r einforcing practices, specifying that these

errors are no t errors in computat ions, but are errors o f careless desig n and the res ult is

dire waste of mate rials .20

In this declara tion, Mayers blamed uneconomic al results on s elected practitioners,

rather t han on the ex istence of s pecialized practitioners. In so doing he made a careful

dist inction betw een the theory and the practice o f reinforced concrete construction.

T his dis tinc tion became a corners tone of factory specialists defense of their ex pert

standing. A s did other engineers o f the day, Mayers pointe d to the need for the

assistance of knowledg eable professionals in f ollow ing the g row ing body of codes andstandards for concrete. Standards, and the whole body of standardized systems of rein-

forcing and concrete construction, posed dangers to the factory designer and owner

because, Mayers believ ed, each building presented new problems . O nl y by careful

study could the designer achieve effective and economic al a pplication of s tandardized

products a nd procedures. W it h such rhetor ic, concrete ex perts embedded a practical

complexity in a theoretically simplified technology.

In forwarding this type of argument, engineers were beginning to appropriate for

their own knowledge and experience the commercial cache that might have attached

instead to technical objects themselves. Engineers and other factory design specialists

com monly declared that materials alone do not cons titute a system. A . J. Widmer , a

cons ulting engineer w ho specialized in reinforced concrete, wrote in 1915:

A staff of ex perience d eng ineer s is a most es sential feature of a tr ue system. T he

furnishing of re inforcing s teel of correct types c annot constitute a system unless

the design of the s tructure is complete i n t he hands o f engineers ex perienced in

the applica tion o f those par ticular types.21

A ccording to the engineer s, sav ings were to be ha d from e lim in atin g the need for

skilled labor on the worksite, not from e liminating consulting engineers. A dver tising

tex t combine d claims for the eff iciency and speed of building systems w ith inv ocations

of proved experience. As another prominent engineer put it in his 1911 prescrip-

tions for construction using standardized elements:

the as sembling of these materials into f inal structures and the instal lation of the

equipment would be under the direct control of those who know the exact rea-son for the provis ion of every single feature; and t heir knowledg e o f future oper-

ating conditions enables them to exercise an intelligent discretion that should


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T H E P R O D U C T IO N O F T E C H N O L O G IC A L R E SE M B L A N CE 9 1

result in a more harmonious whole than could result solely through a literal

adherence to the most elaborate specif ications .22

A call for discr et ion, and a deep know ledg e of t he reas ons for te chnic al specif ications,

welded a s ystematized and standardized c onstr uction me thod to an almos t inchoat e set

of intellectual abilities purportedly possessed by the engineers issuing that call.2

A l l such rhetoric convey s the te ns ion technic al ex perts per ceiv ed betw een the

value of rationalized production methods to their industrial clientele and the poten-

tial loss of occupational authority that might follow from the implementation of those

methods. We can see the irony of marketplace demands with which the experts con-

tended. Surely the c ombina tion of standardized materials and me thods w ith cus-

tomized applications could have struck the industrialist buying a factory building asparadox ical. W hy did building systems and standards ex ist if not to do away w ith the

necessity for (costly) specialized expertise and for the very presence of inchoate abili-

ties on the construction site?

In the trade literature of the early 1900s, the specialized experts preempted this

argument w ith a sophisticated and ex quisitely self serving co nception of how unration-

alized (that is, undivided) technical knowledge could work for commerce. Consulting

engineer Willard Case articulated the relationship of standardized technologies and

engineering expertise. He noted

a logical and healthy tendency f rom several causes toward type classification, and

this has embraced not only the form of design and character o f construction, but

the ex terior architectura l tre atme nt as w ell.24

Invoking the notion of type classification was a powerful gesture. It cast standardiza-

tion and the w ork of the factory design and constr uction as tasks of tax onomic dist inc-

tion. According to this formulation, while construction could involve the same

organizational methods that manufacturers used, specific bodies o f knowledge were notnecessarily transferable between different production situations. To refer to engineer-

ing and construction work in this way elevated them to the status of scientific pursuits

and made standardization seem not a reductive simplification of labor but a complex

analytical undertak ing. T his de finition supported the claims o f factory specialists that

industrial plants are now based on a logical scientific method of analysis and that

the business o f the enginee r is the science o f building .25

A s Ca ses words indic ate , the unif or mi ty of the ty ped factor ies (ag ain, their re-

semblance was undisguised by any distinguishing decoration) celebrated this set of skills.

T he outward f orm of the building s asserted the qualifications o f their builders, theirvital competencies in a commercial context prone to the devaluation of technical


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skills. T he reinforced concrete factory buildings were bo th the product of the modern

organization of conceptual and physical labor and public symbols of that organization.

Not only do variety, idiosyncracy, and historicizing reference lose their status in such

a calculus of architectural ex pression, but unifor mity becomes a hallmar k of intellec-

tual ac hiev eme nt, oc cupationa l success, and social influence. T he buildings resem-

blance was actually constitutive ofoccupational difference. Spreading this ideology was

not so much an ironic as a necessary, and possibly brilliant, gesture by the ambitious

professionals who designed, built, and marketed industrial architecture in the new

century.

T H E A E S T H E T IC S O F T Y P E

T his discussion has tried so far to demonstr ate the c entr ality o f eng ineering practice to

the form assumed by the A me r ica n indus trial landscape in this century. By roo ting the

emergence of modernist factory design in the org anization of construction and design

w or k it has propos ed a hig hly specif ic as sociation betw ee n tw o spheres of cultural

activity. Such specificity is recommended by Peter Galison in his discussion of archi-

tectural and philosophical participation in the European A ufba u movements of the

first half o f this century.26E x amining the attitudes of B auhaus architects and of propo-

nents of logical positivism, he suggests that links between the two arenas of culture

arise from a set of cultural me anings s hared by t he tw o factions a set of power ful, ifnot fixed, images and aspirations tha t reflect a co mmo n v ision of contemporary tech-

nologies. In a slig ht var iation on G alis ons for mulation, I attribute to one g roup the

factory designing engineers a pair of cultural meanings for technology . O ne meaning

was g rounded in the prac tical sphere, one in the ex pressive spher e, and in the dis -

course of cultural accomplishment each meaning could be used to bolster the other.

T herefore, to complete our picture of the early twentieth century factory designers at

work, we should note tha t as they purs ued the ef ficacious use o f c oncrete for af fordable

factory buildings and bolstered their own standing in the marketplace, these men also

claimed a n e x plicitly aesthetic sig nificance for their products.

W e ca n first note tha t the building firms and cons ultants w ho des ig ned and erected

the reinforced concrete factories were neither ignor ant of contemporary architectural

fas hion nor dismissive o f its demands. P romot ing the m inima l use of traditional mate-

rials a nd orna me nta tion in these building s, builders o f reinforced concrete factories

crafted aesthetic arguments for functionalist design against a backdrop of vigorous

cr itical debate in the arc hitectural press. T he specific terms of ideolog ical ex changes

among critics and architects of 1900 ranged from the formalist to the moral. A dv o-

cates of modern, utilitarian design and promoters of eclectic, historicizing architecture

accused one another of aesthetic ineptitude, antisocial behavior, and even antidemo-

cratic intent . T he sw eeping nature o f their concerns grew from their conceptions of


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T H E P R O D U C T IO N O F T E C H N O L O G I CA L R ES E MB L A N C E 9 3

how industrialization w ould transform A me ric an life and culture. Cr itics, public fig-

ures, and professionals o f all k inds assessed A me r ica n prospects i n the new century.

T hey rooted the progress or the im min e nt demise of A me ric an culture in the grow th

of mass production and mass co nsumption and encr oaching subordination o f all other

endeavors to these goals. Depe nding o n the interpreter, A me ric an arts and letters

including ar chitecture and the pursuit of an orderly moder n society could be

ex pected to flounder or flourish i n tande m a mid these changes .27

Builders of reinforced concrete factories entered the c ritica l fray to praise the aus-

tere structures to critics and the larger audience of potent ial factory buyers. A lt ho ug h

promotional literature produced by factory building firms never failed to m en tion the

efficiency and economy of concrete construction it also offered explanations, praise,

and justification for the appearance of the factories in answer to prevailing critical

debates. T he factory builders jo ine d those analysts w ho claime d a favorable prognosis

for A mer ican culture in the new era of mass production. T heir buildings w ould be part

of modern culture and challenge the rear guard ass umption that only conv entiona l

academic practice could yield buildings of ar chitectural significance. T he factory

builders arg uments addressed all the g eneralities i n w hich conte mporary architectural

experts trafficked, listing advantages to the modern factory that included the intrin-

sic va lue of a well designed building a nd the benefits of hea lth and conte ntme nt for

factory workers.28

A t this po int we mi g ht be g in to see a li nk betw ee n the tw o sets of cultural meaning sg iv en to the new factories by the ir creators: a conse rv atism unites the builders practi-

cal and aesthetic agendas. Each advantage to utilitarian factory design mentioned

above indicates a portion o f the f actory builders ideology of modernity, yet in no way

did their program challenge fo undational precepts of aes thetic acc omplishment in the

U nite d States. First, creating the case for the visual pleasure tha t a well designed

factory m ig ht br ing to the discer ning,29 factory builders offered self justifying discus-

sions of factory design in publications of the cement trade and factory management.

T he co nte nt of this literature mi g ht be described as an ass ociation of the reinforced

concrete factorys constitutive elements the ex posed concrete co lumn, the s tandard-ized steel sash w indow, a nd all the other simplified, repetitiv e forms ty pically used in

this type of construction w ith tr aditional architectural v alues of visual beauty and

harmony.

Similarly, factory builders and architectural critics were formulating new ideas of

w hat consti tute d g ood desig n and, mor e broadly, w ha t constituted contr ibutio ns to

A me r ic an taste or cultur e, but as the y did so the y ex te nde d an old aesthetic

premise that certain k inds of ar chitectural forms were appropriate for building s of

certain functions to a contemporary situatio n. For architects and critics, this aspect

of realism was largely a matter o f taste. A comme ntator w riting in A merican A rchitect

in 1909 ex plained bluntly that a free use of intricate detail or ex pensive materials in a


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soap factory w ould be mere aff ect ation. 0 Factory builders, on the ot her hand, saw a

second, and distinctly conservative, reason to express through a buildings form the

purposes for w hich it is intende d. B ot h groups believ ed that the mater ial nature o f abuilding can have as full an expressive meaning as any o ther ar chitectural conv ention,

but factory builders also believed in the advertising value of a handsome plant in the

path of nationa l trav el. T hat v alue s temmed from the factorys identification with

industrial processes it contained. If the appearance of the factory conveyed economi-

cal and repetitious production methods, unencumbered by superfluous detail or dis-

guise, anyone encountering the structure might see in it the modern attitudes of the

buildings operators, and thus deduce the nature of the work conducted within. Such

buildings would have a definite effect for good . . . upon customers and as an adver-

tis eme nt to those w ho pass it.31

C O N C L U S I O N

In this happy blending of culture and commerce the outward form of the reinforced

concrete factory building reiterates the organization of labor under which it was cre-

ated and w ith w hich it operates. W e see a political c ompatibility to the tec hnical,

commercial, and aesthetic aspirations of the factory engineers.

W e als o see tha t f unctio na lis m can comprise no t only a frank archite ctural

expression of the material nature of a building and a n ex pression of a building s func-

tion, but also the builders (hoped for) f unction w ithin a market or community.

T o summarize: as they s olved the pra ctical problems of an ex panding production

sector, the te chnical occupations forwarded a hier arc hical vis ion of A me ric an indus-

try that reduced the autonomy and opportunities of the great majority of industrial

employees w hile est ablishing a secure niche for their ow n services. T he introduction

of simplified and standardized production processes and goods displaced established

productiv e trades, created a broad str atum of low paid positions t hat offered little hope

of training or advancement, and at the same time brought employment to universitytrained engineers.32 T he enthusias m of these experts for a n overt ex pression of new

technologies and materials in the outward forms of buildings and manufactured goods

was not an accidental by product of econo mic ex pediency and technic al proble m

solv ing but an ex pression of this new social order certainly m ode m in a narrow high

cultur al sense, but not necessarily progressive in a ny broader cultur al sense. T his origi

nary aspect of the modernist aesthetic reflects what David Harvey refers to as

moder nisms real nether side, w hich lay, he writes,

in its subterranean celebration of corporate bureaucratic power and rationality,under the guise of a return to surface worship of the efficient machine as a suffi-

cient m y th to embody all hum an a spiration.33


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T H E P R O D U C T IO N O F T E C H N O L O G I C A L R E S E MB L A N C E 9 5

To give less w eig ht to the reinforced concrete factory buildings , and other s eemingly

mundane products of modern industrial enterprise, would be to shortchange drasti-

cally the ambitions of their creators, and deflect any possibility of understanding the

social alterations wrought by that enterprise.

Notes

1. See Reyner B anham, A Concrete Atlantis (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986); and Terry Smith,

Making the Modem: Industry, Art, and Design in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1993), pp. 57 92. B anham sees an aesthetic appreciat ion of utilitar ian structures arising after Le Cor -

busiers 1927 enthusiastic appraisal of American grain elevators and factory buildings. Banham writes

of the reinforced concrete factory buildings that hard nosed patrons and the architects w ho served

them . . . had no ideological axes to grind, no revolutionary postures to maintain (p. 53). Revolu-

tionary perhaps not, but ideological without question.2. Banham, A Concrete Atlantis, p. 6.

3. A rnold I. Davidson, Styles of Reasoning, Conce ptual History, and the Emergence of Psychiatry,

The Disunity of Science, ed. Peter Galison and David Strump (1996, Stanford University Press), pp.

75 100; Irene ]. Winter , T he Aff ective Properties of Styles: A n Inquiry into A naly tic Process and

the Inscr iption of Meaning in A rt History, in this volume.

4 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1972), pp. 1 34.

5. Svetlana Alpers, Style is W hat Y ou Make it: T he Visual Arts Once A g ain, in The Concept o f Style,

ed. Berel Lang (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, [1987] 1979), p. 114.

6. Guidance for this project can also be found in recent work in the history of science and the history of

technology that considers the implementation of standardized practices and the creation of standard-ized forms (for instruments, tools, or finished goods). Both disciplines have found complexities

w ithin processes of industrial rationalization; see Michae l Nuwer, From Batch to Flow: Pr oduction

T echnology and Work Force Skills in the Steel Industry, 1880 1920, Technology and Culture 29

(1988 ): 808 38; Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Knowledge a nd Infrastructure in Interna-

tional Information Management, Information Acumen, ed. Lisa Bud Frierman (London: Routledge,

1993), pp. 187 213; Robert K ohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila and the Experimental Life (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1994); Karen Rader, Making Mice: C. C. Little, the Jackson Labora-

tory, and the Standardization of Mus M usculus for Research (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Indi-

ana, 1995). See also: Gail Cooper, Custom Design, Engineering Guarantees, and Unpatentable

Data: T he A ir Conditioning Industry, 1902 1935, Technology and Culture 35 (July 1994): 506 36;

A my Slaton, Orig ins of a Mode m Form: T he Reinforced Concrete Factory in A merica, 1900 1930

(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsy lvania, 1995).

7. Ransome (1844 191 7) began his career in Calif ornia in the 1870s addressing the difficulty of build-

ing to resist earthquakes. In 1885, he constructed a flour mill with floor slabs cast integrally with sup-

porting beams, each beam reinforced in its tension zone with a single rod. By 1889, he had developed

a homogenous system of floor construction in which girders, beams, and slabs of a g ive n bay were cast

as a unit on concrete columns (Ernest L. Ransome, Reminiscence, Reinforced Concrete Buildings

[New York: McGraw Hill, 1912]; reprinted in Howard Newlon, Jr., ed., A Selection of Papers on Con-

crete [ Detroit: A merican Concrete Institute, 1976], pp. 291 93; Henry J . Cow an, The Master Builders,

vol. 1, Science and Building: Structural and Environmental Design in the 19th and 20th Centuries [New

York: John Wi ley & Sons, 1977], pp. 36, 79).

8. A lbert K ahn (1869 1942) established his practice in Detroit. In addition to industrial commissions,

he worked on residential, institutional, and civic buildings. His brother, Julius K ahn (1874 1942),founded the Kahn Trussed Concrete Steel Company in Detroit, and established affiliates of this


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business around the world while working closely with Albert. For information on the Kahns, see

Grant Hildebrand, Designing for Industry: The Architecture o f Albert Kahn (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

Press, 1974); Smith, Making the Modem; Peter Conn, The Divided Mind: Ideobgy and Imagination

in America, 1898-1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 21417; and FedericoBucci,Albert Kahn: Architect o f Ford (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993).

9. Charles Day, Industrial Plants: Their Arrangement and Construction (New York: Engineering Magazine,

1911), pp. 79 80; Har old V. Coes, Better Industrial Plants for Less Money, Factory: The Magazine of

Management 17 (January 1917): 22.

10. William Haber, Industrial Relations in the Building Industry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1930) (reprint edition: New York: A rno and the New York Times, 1971), p. 58.

11. Haber, Industrial Relations, p. 59.

12. Haber also claims that smaller firms were prone to getting involv ed in unsound competitive prac-

tices and that for this reason building trade unions preferred to work with the large integrated build-

ing firms (ibid., pp. 61, 72).

13. Advertisement for Barton Spider Web System, Sweets Catalog 1920, p. 220.14. A s one engineer summarized in 1906, the essence of economy in concrete was to be found in the

duplication of forms and the elimination of architectural details that complicate form construction

(Ross F. Tucker, T he Progress and Logical Des ign of Reinf orced Concrete, Concrete Age 3 [Septem-

ber 1906], p. 333).

15. In 1906, Cement Age published a review o f ten commercial systems of r einforcement; by 1914, dozens

of firms advertised systems of preassembled reinforcement in Sweets Catalog. Mass produced steel

reinforcement became so affordable by the early 1910s that even large construction firms ended pro-

duction of their ow n reinforcing rods. See T he Story of A berthaw (unpublished manuscript in the

archives of A berthaw Constr uction Company, N ort h Billerica, Mass.). The costs to building firms of

machine fabricated forms or reinforcement were offset by savings in labor on the construction site

and by the prevention of excessive wood or steel consumption. By 1903 builders could make use ofprecast concrete beams, columns, and floor slabs, as well, avoiding the exigencies of erecting forms

and of pouring concrete above ground level. Elements were cast on the ground with reinforcement in

place and once set, rapidly assembled by relatively low paid, little trained workers.

16. See Slaton, Origins of a Modern Form, Chapter 4: The Business of Building: Technological

Choices and Organization of the Concrete Constr uction Firm, pp. 192 261.

17. Trade literature of the concrete industry encouraged this division of labor. Engineers wrote of the

ineptitude of f ield workers and the trustworthiness of their own profession, and thereby placed blame

for structural failures on laborers and credit for technical success on their own proficiency. See Sla-

ton, Origins of Mode m Form, pp. 117 44.

18. Day, Industrial Plants, p. 18.

19. Frank D. Chase, A Better Way to Build Your New Plant (Chicago: Frank D. Chase, Inc., 1919), p. 420. Clay ton Mayers, Economy in the Design of Reinforced Concrete Buildings (Boston: Aberthaw Construc-

tion Company, 1918), p. 5.

21. A . J. Widmer, Reinforced Concrete Cons truction (Illinois Society of Engineers and Surveyors,

1915), p. 148. Widmer advocated the Kahn System by name. This raises the question of whether

engineers had a certain fidelity to a given system and whether there was any mutual commitment on

the part of the fabricating company.

22. Day, Industrial Plants, p. 96.

23. See, for example, advertisement for the Roebling Cons tr uction Company, Sweets Catalog 1907

1908, p. 148. Ironically, the concrete engineers message was reinforced by other building trades that

felt threatened by the introduction of systemized building methods. The president of the Bricklayers,

Masons and Plasterers International Union said in 1905:

Concrete construction is a dangerous undertaking and requires the most skilled and intelligent

direction. Our organization has contended that the adoption of the various concrete systems


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T H E P R O D U C T I O N O F T E C H N O L O G I C A L R E SE M B L A N CE 9 7

used in construction are experimental and uncertain at best, and the work requires the most

skillful mechanics.

(President Bowen, Bulletin, Building Trades Ass ociation, New Y ork, September 1905, p. 228, cited in

Haber, Industrial Relations, p. 39.)24. Willard L. Case, The Factory Buildings (New York: Industrial Extension Institute, 1919), p. 254,

emphasis added.

25. Day, Industrial Plants, p. 4; Case, Factory Buildings, p. 255. O n the role of generalized knowledge in

the creation of modem professions, see Theodore Porter, Objectivity as Standardization: The

Rhetoric of Impersonality in Measurement, Statistics, and Cost Benefit A nalysis,Annals o f Scholar

ship 9 (1992): 30.

26. Peter Galis on, T he Cultural Meaning ofAufbau," Scientific Phibsophy : Origins and Developments, ed.

F. Stadler (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer A cademic Publisher, 1993), pp. 90 91.

27. Richard Wig htman Fox and T. ]. Jacks on Lears, eds., The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in

American History 18 80 -198 0 (New York: Pa ntheon, 1983); and Conn, Divided Mind.

28. These phrases appear in Utili tar ian Structures and T heir A rchitectural T reatment, AmericanArchitect 96 (November 10, 1909): 183; the sentiments are echoed throughout contemporary discussions

of factory design in architectural and technical journals and in books on factory operation.

29. Utilitar ian Structures, p. 185.

30. Utilitar ian Structures, p. 183. In 1921 another critic wrote more calmly that A building should

indicate by its exterior treatment and design something of the purposes for which it is intended. The

indiscriminate use of decoration and color should be avoided in the design of an industrial buildings

(Arthur J. McEntee, Recent Development in the Architectural Treatment of Concrete Industrial

Buildings,Architecture 43 [January 1921]: 18).

31. Utilitarian Structures, p. 186; The Library of Factory Management, vol. 1, Buildings and Upkeep

(Chicago: A . W. Shaw Co., 1 915), p. 87.

32. For detailed discussions on the stratification of labor in the United States after 1900, see David

Noble, America By Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1977); David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work,

Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1982); and Harry Braver man, Labor and Monopoloy Capital: The Degradation of Work

in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).

33. David Harvey, The Condition o f Postmodemity (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1989), p. 36.

The Production of Technological Ressenblence

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