FAR’s work deals with actual construction and its results. Within it, there is no difference between basic and advanced technologies, or low-cost and high-end solutions: what counts is the understanding of the manufacturing and building process behind any program in all its dimensions – spatial to cultural, to economic.
A few principles guide FAR’s analyses or design propositions:
1. definition of intent
2. efficiency in the use of resources
3. their ethical allocation to the program
4. concern for the impact of design choices over users and workers
5. ability of the work to trigger or enable positive change in the environment of relevance
In the world of FAR, the act of design is not limited to architectural form or building engineering. It pervades the entire process of land transformation and delves into the social organization of production. Technology is a means to this world, not an end in itself.
FAR has a fascination with old design and building tools as testimonies of collective ingenuity, cultural identity, and individual associations of hand and mind. In embodying conventions and innovation in their conception and form, they intimate a rule of art as tied to the task at hand as to the understanding their user has of it. To become instruments, tools require vision, adaptation and commitment.
In principle, FAR directs its research focus onto the following areas:
1. analysis of building industrial landscapes
2. articulation of product and process innovation dynamics in construction
3. development of building policy directions and initiatives
4. preparation of construction briefs
5. assessment of as-built design
6. development of strategic building systems
7. identification of and response to technological gaps