by John Frazer -- "The Electronic Craftsman"
relating to his '95 book and Architectural Association exhibit, 
"An Evolutionary Architecture"

http://www.ellipsis.com/evolutionary/contexts.original.html

Industrial production used to be associated with high tooling costs and
very large production runs. This is now changing because the computer 
has paved the way for what I have called 'the electronic craftsman'. 
The direct relationship between the designer at the computer console 
and the computer-controlled means of production potentially means not 
just a dramatic reduction in the production costs of the tools for mass
production, and thus shorter economic runs, but a one-to-one control of 
production and assembly equipment. This is effectively a return to one-off 
craft technology, but with all the capability of the precision machine tool.

As Charles Jencks describes it: 'The new technologies stemming from
the computer have made possible a new facility for production. This
emergent type is much more geared to change and individuality than
the relatively stereotyped productive processes of the First Industrial
Revolution.

And mass production, mass repetition, was of course one of the
unshakeable foundations of Modern Architecture. This has cracked
apart, if not crumbled. For computer modelling, automated production,
and the sophisticated techniques of market research and prediction
now allow us to mass produce a variety of styles and almost
personalized products. The results are closer to nineteenth-century
handicraft than the regimented superblocks of 1965.'

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