ABSTRACT
This chapter illuminates the origin and premise of the Digital Vernacular through the lens of a specific designbuild project, The Barn. It reflects on the questions raised through the process and outcome of this project and through lessons learned that have influenced students and faculty. Design innovation emerges when time-tested principles are synthesized with available technologies and unique circumstances of time and place. Technological developments have shifted the current economic model of architectural design and making by providing the opportunity to reestablish this lost connection. The Barn project began with a small grant from the Coleman Foundation to support entrepreneurial activity within a design curriculum. The most significant outcome of The Barn was the questions that the project revealed and inspired, which are now guiding new student designbuild projects. Designbuild pedagogy should be structured to allow these questions to be both posed and addressed by students immersed in hands-on work.
