Construction Drawing: Retracing the Roles of an Early 20th Century British Contractor / THEMA

This talk introduces drawing as an investigative tool. Architectural drawings do not only communicate information, but create it: compiling, scrutinizing, charting, comparing, and hypothesizing from existing sources. Such methods are especially relevant in a particularly resource-scarce and messy area of historical research: construction history. The lecture focuses on one building firm: John Laing & Son, a large-scale builder of garden cities and settlements in the early twentieth century, using drawings to piece together construction sites, details, projects and work relationships. The scale and scope of Laing’s vertically-integrated organisation redefined normative roles such as ‘contractor,’ ‘unskilled worker,’ ‘developer,’ and ‘architect.’

This talk is the first in the 2024 EDAR lecture series Scholars in Transition "Mud on the Floor: Dirty Realities in Scholarly Work." 

Image caption: timelapse of Laing workers constructing an ‘Easiform’ concrete house in the 1940s. Drawing by Jesse Honsa.