The debate about architecture is usually focused on finished objects or on processes of projective invention considered as purely intellectual or aesthetic, autonomous from social praxis and productive injunctions. It is not easy to overcome this tendency, especially in the architect’s disciplinary and professional environment; despite the fact that architecture is a social art par excellence, collectively produced and appropriated, and always marked by the limits set by the dominant mode of production.
In addition to the activities carried out during the International Symposium on Production Studies: Architecture, design and construction site that took place on 4 and 5 April in São Paulo, several other activities aimed at Affiliated Researchers were promoted during the week by the TFTK Core Team composing the fifth Working Meeting. This meeting in São Paulo aimed to bring together the TFTK team to organise common discussions within Production Studies, including the presence of Sérgio Ferro himself, to discuss the organisation of TFTK's official publications, to make public the construction of this field of research, as well as to get to know in person some emancipatory works and experiences referenced in production studies and often cited by Sérgio Ferro.
In this talk, Katie Lloyd Thomas and Will Thomson introduce the UK-based research of the Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges project which they are working on with Professor João Marcos de Almeida Lopes who leads the research team in Brazil. How is Sérgio Ferro’s work on labour, design and the building site contributing to establishing the new field of Production Studies?