Log 5: Assuming Risk

"Innovation, like other impulses in the design field, is regulated. Professional institutions created to support architecture often undermine the proposal of structures, components and elements that have no common precedent. Most of the language contained in contracts associated with the construction industry deliberately avoids risk - a fundamental characteristic of innovation. There are circumstances that justify crossing the line between designer and fabricator, leaving the safety of the designer’s realm and embarking upon the complexities and liabilities of the fabricator’s world. By doing so we can recapture some of the innovative sensibility apparently written out of our discipline by insurance policies, professional associations, and institutions of higher learning. Architecture is obligated to build with a philosophy of innovation in mind." Exerpt from "Assuming Risk," by Dawn Finley