Boatbuilding and urban genesis

Abstract

Traditional boatbuilding today is a fading craft, raising questions of not only how to preserve this craft and reconstruct and transmit the knowledge and skills related to it to future generations but also, considering new technologies and available materials, why its preservation and perpetuation are important. Answering these questions requires a valorisation framework for the traditional boatbuilding craft and its methods of construction, considering the fact that traditional boatbuilding is the essence of modern shipbuilding and inextricably linked to the development and transmission of knowledge in city making too. To help create this framework, this paper addresses two distinct ways of thinking involved in making boats: one tied to boats made from already existing models or designs and the other to boats created ex nihilo with the help of sesto and garbo tools. Through a historical and theoretical examination and by building on the empirical case study of traditional boatbuilding in wood in the Mediterranean, this paper explores the concept of constructing boats ex nihilo in the technical, socio-economic, and spatial sense, shedding the light on the creativity inherent in shipbuilding and its implications. This paper will contribute to understanding how knowledge transmission in traditional boatbuilding has progressed and the role this knowledge model can play in shipbuilding development, offering a valuable resource also for those interested in development and transmission of alternative models of knowledge production.