Week 3 // The Case for Working with Your Hands // Matthew Crawford

Matthew Crawford


In this session we looked at ‘The Case for Working with your Hands’ written by Matthew Crawford an American writer, mechanic and Research fellow at the University of Virginia. For this blog were looking at the chapter titled ‘The Separation of Thinking from Doing’ which opens with the below quote:

 “The dichotomy of mental versus manual didn’t arise spontaneously. Rather, the twentieth century saw concerted efforts to separate thinking from doing. Those efforts achieved a good deal of success in ordering our economic life and it is this success that perhaps explains the plausibility the distinction now enjoys. Yet to call this “success” is deeply perverse, for wherever the separation of thinking from doing has been achieved, it has been responsible for the degradation of work.” P37 
A statement that is highly credible if we are to consider both Matthews academic and vocational background.

Traditional Wheel Wrighter working on Carriage Wheel

Mechanic working on an engine

Is it the death of the pen in Architecture? Is it fair to say that the craftsmanship in creating architecture comes from that hand eye relationship manifested through drawing as a opposed to the disconnected process of using CAD. This is a topic that divides many, there is no doubt that for the sake of mass production, the computer certainly saves us time, therefore increasing productivity and intern increasing potential profit. However as one who is still going through the mill, looking around at the architecture produced in the past namely the work of Architects such as Mies van de Rohe, his attention to detail, yes one could argue would be possible with CAD as a tool but definitely not as the starting point for creating such beauty especially seen in the column section below.

Mies van de Rohe - Column design 

So, in all this, what is the argument? In an interview with Ed Cumming, a freelance writer for the Guardian, Matthew Crawford states that “Hands-on-education should have a much more prominent role in schools”, a statement like this is noteworthy when considered with his own account that although he majored in physics, he then goes on to say “I couldn’t have given a crap about it when I was 17. If you’re a boy and you’re making a race car, trigonometry is suddenly interesting”. We all learn in diverse ways at different paces, however to separate the thinking process from the doing process can often limit the learning potential for an individual.





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