Guiding Labor: Sensable Instructions through Digital Jigs

Abstract

Contemporary architects find themselves at a juncture, navigating the transition from traditional modes of instruction to an asymmetrical integration of digital technologies. Drawings remain central to architectural practice, yet a widening gap persists between tools for making drawings and tools for interpreting them. Since Alberti’s division between intellectual and productive labor, architectural instructions have been generated in remote offices and executed on distant construction sites. Digital tools have expanded the information density of drawings, yet the process of interpretation remains predominantly analog. Graphical conventions, though precise, are abstract, and so paper instructions alone lack spatial meaning. Builders ultimately rely on the aid of analog locating techniques to translate these abstractions into actions. Tools as simple as strings and squares have long been present on construction sites, enabling this translation. Over time, the shape and function of such devices has evolved in response to different pressures of location, from the Gothic template which left room for the builder to improvise, to the industrial jig that constrained movement to ensure replicability. The limitations of analog locating became clear when the plumb bob, long trusted to mark which direction was vertical, proved inadequate for navigating trajectories of flying objects. The solution was to embed physical devices with memory, marking a transition from tools which measure where they are to those that know where they are going. This shift from stateless to stateful devices gradually entered construction sites, and though we might distrust the devices that make possible the steering of missiles, this paradigm shift offers a productive challenge to the field of architecture. If simplifying complex construction is worthwhile, then communication pathways which more faithfully transfer information from digital model to physical destination must be explored. Central to this transformation are the tools which anchor instructions on site: interfaces already mediating between architect and builder, which must now evolve to interpret digital signals from afar. Digital jigs will be the conduits of paperless instruction on physical sites, enabling what this thesis terms sensable instructions: instructions receivable by both machines and humans.