Technology as Skills

Seminario 4: Arquitectura Campos del Pensamiento MAP[au] 2014-15 | FAU | UNLP | Zaid, Ayman Saf

| Prof. Dr. Alberto Guillermo Ranea

Technology as Skills James K. Feibleman | Technology and Culture, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Summer, 1966), pp. 318-328 The urban area is a human made rearrangement. The city can be described as an artificial environment of solids, voids and all the complex of networks between them, functioning and failing in different ways, with all the planned and accidental sets of layers. The rest are the natural, the undefined set of untouched factors, but still affect him sometimes, still he had not found a way to control, only sometimes to React in order to protect himself.

The current culture is the total set of surviving heritage and knowledge of matters and ideas, and how to handle them. The theories and practices are the sayings and acts made to understand how to use and what to do with this heritage and what it is used for. The Skills are the smartness to use Artifacts. The Artifacts consist of both Tools and Signs.

Skills develop through learning and repetition, sometimes by systematic way other times by experiment.

What sharpen the Skill are the interest and the need. The need to have easy access to food resources led to modern agriculture, the interest of the farmer is different than the interest of architect who builds the farm, or the consumer. The interest is a goal if achieved self-satisfaction is reached and a benefit for the public is added. Lack of interest will lead to bad quality job. An owner of a private profitable company has different interest than his employees, if he wants to get better results from the employees, then he needs to share interest with them and distribute Responsibility, not to use them as Tools.

Technology is a set of Skills put in an order, it consists of both material and the know-how. The perfect automated Technology is a set of best organized skills done effectively and efficiently. The perfect technology is the one made without a human factor. The human factor is read here as the source of errors, because he thinks, which leads to change, although the thinking is what leads to near-perfect.

The Perfection is a fiction concept.

The set of information and training needed to handle a tool is the know-how. The practice within time is Experience. A fresh graduate has high self-confidence that he has the know-how, while he only knows the basics. With experience, his knowledge will be widened, then he will understand how little he knows, thus his level of confidence will decrease. With more experience, he will become an expert, his knowledge and experience will become wider, deeper, and more balanced, which will affect positively his confidence.

People have different interests and capabilities. Some can be better in managing or serving other people, others can originally have an artistic Sense. The sharpening of those original interests, by practicing and gaining knowledge, is a combination which can probably lead to Creativity in production, if in suitable circumstances.

For an architect, an architectural CAD program is a drafting tool. This tool is designed by another human/s for the architect in specific, to be a tool by which he can best present his designs, as he is its creative master operator. After the program is developed and constructed, the architect needs to learn and adapt his design skills to it. Nowadays architect use different sets of programs as tools to present his 1

Seminario 4: Arquitectura Campos del Pensamiento MAP[au] 2014-15 | FAU | UNLP | Zaid, Ayman Saf

| Prof. Dr. Alberto Guillermo Ranea

works, then to construct it, each tool is better for a fragment of the sum of his work, such as designing, modeling, executing, and management. The architect need to manipulate within a set of programs that can in a way or another function together, the sum of all is the skill he needs to provide his work.

Learning a program to a level that an architect can use it with proficiency is not a fast process. Also the programs keep changing, developing and widening, in a market led by profitable companies. The modern architect needs to keep upgrading his skills in order not to lose the ability to produce. He still can handsketch to present his modern ideas, but not to plan, design or construct in the standard level which is considered efficient nowadays. He shall also keep himself updated about the new tools that may help him in future projects, tools which may be more flexible for serving his desires and needs, or can provide higher level of details he is seeking. Then his habit to master proficiency in his career is not only confined in architecture, but also include the instruments, tools, skills, technologies and its’ relations together, all those he needs now and the ones he may need in future, to be competitive.

Many types of modern architecture are now valued as Different and Creative, because its’ architect had used new tools, to differentiate his skills, which allowed him to produce different architecture. And therefore, he proved that his work is not only conceptual and theoretical, but realistic and achievable.

The insistence of such an architect to try new ways to furnish what he imagined, had led his contributions to be known internationally. He became a top-notch professional architect because he has unique skills and can control it well.

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