Grossju - Project 006 Reading Response

Spuybroek states a loaded and controversial thesis statement in this reading, claiming that “as all craft moves toward design, all labor must move toward robotics.”  Good design, in Spuybroek’s mind, is work that offers both continuity and variation.  The hand produces infinite variation, but virtually no continuity, whereas a process such as industrial casting produces continuity without variation.  The computer, and specifically digital computing, is the proper bridge between the two.  The code, as presented in this text, allows designers to “establish a type of formation that is neither completely abstract nor completely organic.”  In other words, a product can be produced that has an embedded global structure or logic, but also contains flexibility and allowance for change.

Though I originally thought that Spuybroek’s statements were absurd, I no longer disagree with him.  I do agree that good design straddles cohesion and variation.  The idea that all labor must move toward robotics is a bit problematic for me, however, because it relies on the decontextualization of a design project.  Spuybroek is talking about looking at something as an object in the present moment.  I tend to believe that there is beauty to be found in an object by knowing its history – that its imperfections are created from human flaw – as opposed to any variations precisely and intentionally scripted to appear so.