Customer Reviews

Factory (Reaktion Books - Objekt)

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A disappointingly conventional take on an underlooked building type. It's evident that Darley conducted her research strictly within the confines of a library (as opposed to actually visiting the factories) which consequently makes her narrative both insincere and pedantic.

Historical quality aside, Darley's evaluation of said typology uncovers little beyond what can be intuited from any general survey book. Most, but not all, of the images deal with stylistic generalities, only serving to loosely support obvious themes ("Factory as Icon", "Factory as Sales Tool", etc). This seems to be an unfortunate habit of architectural historians: research works on paper instead of experiencing them first-hand, then use the research to make meaningless categorizations of no value to the designer.

Darley's lack of plans, sections and diagrams puts severe limitations on conveying the depth of the works. The reader simply can't understand the spaces well enough to ascertain their functional or visceral appeal.

I wish more historians would take greater risks when writing and presenting their ideas. I commend the effort, but "Factory" is only marginally useful as a historical reference. And for designers: utterly worthless.