Sérgio Ferro, William Morris and a New Field: Architecture, Cultural Studies, and Production Studies

In ‘History of Architecture Seen from the Building Site’, Sérgio Ferro made a sharp distinction between ‘aesthetics’ and ‘poeisis’, arguing that ‘production studies’ concerns the study of ‘making and doing’, not ‘passive reception’, a study of social and collective practices, rather than individual experience. In making the distinction, Ferro made passing reference to William Morris as a positive example.

Ferro is not the first to identify in Morris a distinct approach to material culture. In the 1950s, the leading intellectual figures of the British New Left—E. P. Thompson and Raymond Williams—found in the work of Morris, an alternative politics and critical cultural theory to the dominant tendencies of orthodox communism and liberalism. These readings of Morris within the New Left also generated a new field—cultural studies—providing methods and objects of analysis distinct from the humanities and social sciences disciplines.

This chapter identifies how interpretations of Morris provide insights into the politics and epistemological limits and possibilities of architecture, showing why production studies may prove disruptive to the profession of architecture.