The Nature and Art of Workmanship

This 1968 book looks at the aesthetic quality of our environment and shows shows how and why we are conscious of finish and workmanship.

David Pye (Author)

9780521293563, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 21 September 1978

144 pages
24.4 x 17 x 0.8 cm, 0.24 kg

This is a digital reprint of David Pye's original 1968 edition. Within it he argues that the aesthetic quality of our environment depends as much on its workmanship as on its design, and that workmanship has been largely ignored. He proceeds to develop a new theory of the aesthetics of workmanship which can be applied to architecture, to the products of industry and to craft work. Mr Pye shows how and why we are conscious of finish and workmanship, goes on to ask why so much of our environment is impoverished and asks what can be done about it.

Plates
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. Design proposes, workmanship disposes
2. The workmanship of risk and the workmanship of certainty
3. Is anything done by hand?
4. Quality in workmanship
5. The designer's power to communicate his intentions
6. The natural order reflected in the work of man
7. Diversity
8. Durability
9. Equivocality
10. Critique of 'On the nature of Gothic'
11. The aesthetic importance of workmanship, and its future
12. Commentary on the plates
Index.

Subject Areas: Architecture [AM]