read 07 - models, prototypes, and archetypes

Burry examines the role models and prototypes play in the production of knowledge. Prototypes, unlike models, serve as the basis upon which further decisions can be made. To Burry, this legitimizes the role of the prototype in a manufacturing-centric economy. It is in this paradigm that designers have powerful tools toward the mass-production of new typologies (which subsequently gain the momentum to become standards, primarily due to their reproducibility). Complex columns of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia can be rationalized and reproduced, so long as there is enough granite and electricity to keep the robots milling ad infinitum.

Models also produce and reinforce specific knowledge about a subject, an example being Gaudi's gravity field model serving to guide formal and structural decisions. And even though computers can model this curvature relatively accurately, the analog 'model' gains potency in its own right as an artifact of architectural production. It tells us something that we didn't know prior.

I would focus on some of Burry's thoughts, specifically questioning where the line between model and prototype exists. If both models and prototypes reinforce knowledge, what ways can the two participate in the production of new knowledges?