Understanding the roles of tacit knowledge in the historical collaboration between architects, engineers and contractors.

This presentation is part of the ongoing PhD project (ASP FNRS, supervised by Rika Devos, ULB) of Laurens Bulckaen, A Culture of collaboration: how architects, engineers and contractors interacted on complex projects in Belgium (1890-1970).

The contribution to the TACK conference introduced three different types of tacit knowledge in the process of designing and constructing complex historical buildings, as encountered in case studies on building projects in Belgium during the first half of the twentieth century. The types of knowledge are distilled from a close-reading of the archival materials that bare traces of the exchange of this knowledge between the principle actors in the planning phase: mainly drawings and “grey paperwork,” documenting the collaboration between architects, engineers and contractors in historical complex building projects. Moving beyond the consideration of “designerly ways of knowing” as an addition to “technical knowledge” (supported by professionalization, education and socialization) and focusing at essential moments of knowledge exchange in the historical building process, the presentation introduced the concept of “interdisciplinary knowledge” (and skill), allowing building professionals from different disciplines to exchange and work together. The paper also identified “knowledge generated on site” as a type of knowledge, typical of specific projects demanding innovative or alternative approaches to building, which either became a condition for the project to be built or simply facilitated the project.

The presentation set out to differentiate between technical knowledge (“knowing what”) present in each professional builder and in different domains of knowing in building, including the managerial knowledge necessary to run a project. Through the lens of tacit knowledge, considered present in all three types of knowledge mentioned, we evaluated and characterized the diverse aspects of collaboration between architects, engineers and contractors. By closely examining a limited number of key archival documents in historical case studies, we illustrated that, and how, diverse forms of tacit knowledge are indispensable in the largely intangible process of professional collaboration in historical building, which cannot be explained by individual technical knowledge only (both explicit and tacit). Since creating buildings required an assemblage of knowledge from diverse disciplines, also interdisciplinary knowledge, often tacit in nature, was necessary to allow efficient exchange.

As complexity in building increasingly grew throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the roles of the building actors started to shift and new roles emerged. Building on the concept of tacit knowledge, this presentation proposed an approach to bridge the gap between looking at the building process as a collaborative effort and demonstrating that the building process is governed by much more than the factual, explicit knowledge of a single actor.