ABSTRACT
Every summer from 2008 to 2014, seven European schools jointly organised a workshop that focused on making. On each occasion we worked with one specific material: brick, stone, concrete, plywood, wicker, steel rods or wooden beams. There was no preconceived design assignment. Instead, the point of departure was constructing with the material itself. The workshops aimed to shed light on the relation between designing and making through an uncommon design process. Instead of the customary process from sketch design to definitive design to construction, during the workshop we built at full scale right from the start. In this paper I will compare this way of working with the teaching methods of artist Josef Albers in the 1930s and architect Buckminster Fuller in the 1950s. Both were strong advocates of the ‘learning by doing’ method and building at full scale. Through this comparison, I want to illustrate and clarify a number of didactic aspects of our workshops. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315730769/02223970-f959-45ac-9ad6-ab23b3acb748/content/fig451_1.jpg"/>
