Professor Christine Casey

CRAFTVALUE seeks to put making into the major narrative of early modern architecture by illuminating the interface between design and craftsmanship and showing how skills and technology influence architectural production. It aims to produce the first holistic, trans-medial study of architecture and craftsmanship in Britain and Ireland in the early modern period with wide implications for the study of architecture in Europe and beyond.

STONE-WORK challenges the perception of architecture as a primarily conceptual activity by shifting focus from individual to collective achievement. Despite the emphatic materiality of architecture its history remains dominated by a sequential model which privileges the agency of individuals and ideas. STONE-WORK"s fundamental premise is that architecture results from a cumulative sequence of actions involving an array of actors, great and small. There can be no buildings without materials and no materials without those who procure, transport, and fashion them. How can design be related to the material from which it takes form and the skills which give it form? Though interdependence of systems and actors is a key scientific concept, it has had inadequate impact on the study of early modern architecture. Stone, the most valued building material of the period, offers a way into architectural process which forces us to include the broader community involved in the making of buildings. No other medium so fully encapsulates the sequential nature of architectural production involving a wide range of agents of varying skill and authority. Revealing stone"s hidden trajectory from quarry to wall, floor, column, and chimneypiece will probe the nexus of skills, techniques, and support mechanisms developed by communities in its sourcing, supply, and fashioning and the impact of these processes upon building activity. This cross-disciplinary research, combining the history of architecture and craft with geology, will produce the first holistic analysis of architecture and stone production, thereby interrogating the relationship of material, design, and execution. The prodigious classical architecture of Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century, richly documented in untapped archival material, is an exemplary episode in monumental stone building which offers a meaningful, accessible, and feasible route into the complex problem of interdependence in architectural production

STONE-WORK challenges the perception of architecture as a primarily conceptual activity by shifting focus from individual to collective achievement. Despite the emphatic materiality of architecture its history remains dominated by a sequential model which privileges the agency of individuals and ideas. STONE-WORK"s fundamental premise is that architecture results from a cumulative sequence of actions involving an array of actors, great and small. There can be no buildings without materials and no materials without those who procure, transport, and fashion them. How can design be related to the material from which it takes form and the skills which give it form? Though interdependence of systems and actors is a key scientific concept, it has had inadequate impact on the study of early modern architecture. Stone, the most valued building material of the period, offers a way into architectural process which forces us to include the broader community involved in the making of buildings. No other medium so fully encapsulates the sequential nature of architectural production involving a wide range of agents of varying skill and authority. Revealing stone"s hidden trajectory from quarry to wall, floor, column, and chimneypiece will probe the nexus of skills, techniques, and support mechanisms developed by communities in its sourcing, supply, and fashioning and the impact of these processes upon building activity. This cross-disciplinary research, combining the history of architecture and craft with geology, will produce the first holistic analysis of architecture and stone production, thereby interrogating the relationship of material, design, and execution. The prodigious classical architecture of Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century, richly documented in untapped archival material, is an exemplary episode in monumental stone building which offers a meaningful, accessible, and feasible route into the complex problem of interdependence in architectural production.

Joint project with the National Trust at Clandon Parkm the Office of Public Works and academic partners in Ireland and the UK to explore digital methods of revealing historic craft practice in architecture.

This is an interdisciplinary project with the Department of Geology which focuses on the Museum Building at Trinity College Dublin as an exemplar for the use of polychrome stone and carved ornament in Dublin's Victorian architecture