Week Two Readings + Lecture

Initial design thoughts

The Walkshop

Week One Readings...

Design through Making: an Introduction

Sheil, in his introduction of “Design Through Making” asserts that architects do not make buildings, the instead make information for buildings by turning ideas into drawings, models, texts and data- they realise ideas into built forms.  But with the rise of digital design, he questions what the architect still has to gain from the physical and tacit.  Cad, Sheil argues, has made an architect neither a designer, nor a maker, but a hybrid of the two, requiring a reformation of the fundamental components of the architectural discipline and a necessary revolution of the expertise of designers. Drawing and making have now become inseparable entities and Sheil puts forward that the design environment needs to be redesigned.  

The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research

Schwartz asserts that the fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things are the motivating factors for education, in his case in graduate science. The same can be said for design school, and further parallels can be made between the two. Architecture is like a studying a Phd in science- there are no “tests” or right and wrong- you have to make your own way.  As an architecture student, there is a constant search for the right answer, as there is in science, but Shwartz argues that the nature of the problem is that there is no answer, the answer needs to be found through a process of testing and discovering.  Students need to understand that it is ok to keep getting it wrong, as long as lessons are learnt from mistakes made.  In design, one does not learn what people once discovered, but it is up to the student to make their own discoveries, guided by their superiors and fellow students, and the more comfortable we are in making mistakes, the more likely we are to make big discoveries.

The First Assignment

An Introduction