The swivel clamp and the scaffold network

Abstract

The following research was carried out based on the scaffolding component called the swivel clamp. Since 1914, this joint has had a technological development in relation to its manufacturing patents and its evolution through time. The research that develops this article is practice based, as a method of approach to constitute a link between technology and the production of the networked space of the scaffolding. This relationship contains a socio-political potential linked to the possibilities that the knot is able to produce in the network. The first swivel clamp joint, patented in 1939, allowed the free assembly of a network as would the scaffolding on the basis of the rope knot. The approach of a type of architectural network thinking has characterized avant-garde projects in art and architecture between the 1950s and 1990s. The lattice that makes up the rotating clamp is ahead of the technology used by some avant-garde projects, producing a revolutionary incubator capable of materializing the desires associated with the imaginaries of utopia in the second half of the 20th century.