Academic architectural education trains students to operate within an abstracted reality, operating through drawings, models, and calculations to bring together materials and approach design challenges. While this abstraction facilitates the dissection of complex problems, it risks disrupting the direct relationship between (future) architects and the materials they work with. Limited opportunities for hands- on engagement with materials and their processes on a full scale can alienate students from the tactile, contextual, and embodied knowledge of materiality.

This research explores ways of overcoming that material alienation by investigating the act of making as a physical material encounter within the context of architectural education. Emphasis is placed on both the pedagogical qualities and the spatial contexts of the act of making, with the aim of deriving its value for architectural education and exploring how a school environment can facilitate, or even stimulate, these activities. On a broader scale, it addresses the relationship that our mainstream building culture has with materials, accepting the extraction, processing, consumption and eventual disposal of precious resources. ... Read more