Going into the mould Materials and process in the architectural specification
Katie Lloyd Thomas

To know the true hylomorphic relation it is not enough to go into the workshop and work with the artisan: one must go into the mould itself to follow the operation of form-taking at different levels and scales of physical reality.
Gilbert Simondon

In the chapter ‘Form and Matter’ in The Individual and its Physico-Biological Genesis, Gilbert Simondon sets out a method for understanding form-taking in terms of a chain of processes, as opposed to the simple imposition of form on matter. To understand a technical operation such as the moulding of a brick in the terms of hylomorphism, he argues, is to have ‘the knowledge of someone who stays outside the workshop and only considers what goes in and comes out’. To understand a technical operation in more adequate terms it is not enough to enter the workshop, ‘one must go into the mould itself’. Simondon proceeds to rewrite the operation of moulding bricks, not in terms of form and matter, but as what he calls a ‘clay/mould system’.2 Through this redescription – this ‘going into the mould’ – he challenges the limitations of the hylomorphic schema and argues for alternative models of the technical operation.

Simondon’s rethinking is particularly interesting in its detailed accounts of the clay ‘at different levels and scales of physical reality’. He describes a range of processes from the clay’s preparation in the brickworks to the dynamics of its colloidal structure. By going into the mould he shows that clay is no generic matter. Rather, it is a specific material prepared in a series of specific ways that make a particular kind of form-taking possible. His challenge to the hylomorphic schema may thus be understood to lie in the distinction between clay as ‘matter’ in general and clay as a specific material used in a specific context and practice.

It is this distinction between matter and materials that drives my appropriation of Simondon’s method. I take it up in order to understand the ways in which the practice of architecture treats and conceives building materials and the implications of these conceptualization. Rather than rewrite the technical operation myself, as Simondon does, I look at a variety of descriptions used by architects to specify the material aspects of building, and ask what kinds of conceptualizations of materials they suggest. My primary source is the architectural specification: a contractual document that describes in writing the materials and processes of building and is almost entirely neglected outside practical and technical literature.3 It yields a number of rather different conceptualizations – some clearly structured in hylomorphic terms, some in terms of processes and others not encompassed by Simondon’s two models, such as the recipe or the performance specification. Because of their role as part of architectural documentation these conceptualizations are particularly interesting. They not only reveal something about the way materials are understood, they are also part of the mechanism through which buildings are produced.

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