Information Infrastructure for a Ceramic Industry

Cedric Price’s North Staffordshire “Potteries Thinkbelt” marks a shift from a determined and mechanical architectural paradigm to the fluid and indeterminate model of the information age. The history of the Potteries traces the historical trajectory from industrial production to postindustrial society. For more than 250 years, the North Staffordshire Potteries was the center of the English ceramics industry. It was here that Josiah Wedgwood and Enoch Wood (Cedric Price's great, great grandfather) opened their porcelain "Manufactories" in the early 18th century.[1] By the middle of the 19th century, the "Potteries" had grown from a few small family operations into large corporations. The Potteries also became a center for cutting-edge science and technology. Joseph Priestly conducted his first thermodynamics experiments in the Potteries, and one of James Watt's first steam engines was used to crush flint, mix clay, and turn potter's wheels in the Potteries. The first steam engine in Britain, George Stephenson's "Rocket,” moved materials to and from the Potteries. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Potteries was a thriving web railways, snaking across the landscape to connect towns and factories.[2] But, like much of British industry, it all changed after the war. After the Second World War, Britain was no longer the major industrial power it had once been. Britain's industrial infrastructure became increasingly obsolete and could no longer compete with the emerging industrial superpowers of the United States, Germany and Japan. Today we may perceive that industrial production was giving way to newer technologies. But at the time, successive British governments failed to appreciate the significance of this trend towards post-industrialization, and continued to shore up the old "smokestack" industries as best they could, not realizing that Britain's role in the history of industry and technology had changed forever. For their part, English universities impeded the development of new technologies by privileging higher education as the exclusive preserve of gentlemanly learning while ignoring technology and "applied science." These conditions led to the disastrous "brain drain" of the 1950's and 60's, when the best and brightest British scientists and engineers flocked to American universities and companies. Meanwhile, industrial areas such as the North Staffordshire Potteries languished, while factories closed and workers were laid off. The North Staffordshire "Potteries" is today the ravaged battlefield where the Industrial Revolution was won and lost - an industrial wasteland of ruined factories and rusting machinery. Only the network of rail lines remained intact.
thanks tohttp://people.hws.edu/mathews/potteries_thinkbelt.htm
comments reader:"Great piece Waza. What a bloke, and what an idea!!! A lot of great ideas often don't come to fruition for various reasons but it's good to hear that you're carrying it through with some changes!!! Love the concept of the tower by the way. Maffi was telling me all about it last week...simple as hell and brilliant!!"