VIRTUAL: Learning. Life. Work.

Abstract

In a typical design/build project, a jig is often required to make a detail or component. A detail must be critically explored before it can be replicated multiple times with a high level of precision and craftsmanship. In his book The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford, states that jigs stabilize a process and in doing so lightens the burden of care by reducing degrees of freedom a person must contend with [1]. This concept can be taken out of its manual fabrication context. Jigs are an example of how we use our environment as an extension of our mind to confront contingencies. Conventional education of architects’ privileges independent engagement creating curricular jigs through studio-based design exercises of abstraction focusing on scale drawings, renderings, and models. So in the case of remote on-line teaching during the pandemic, fabrication labs and shop tables were replaced with dining room tables and bedroom desks. So how do we define ‘making’? How do we assess craft? This paper will argue that traditional hands-on learning and pedagogical value of ‘making’ in architectural education took a hard but necessary shift during the global pandemic when in-person teaching abruptly changed and was replaced by remote on-line studios. The intent of the research is not about replacing design/build curriculum with remote online learning but rather to elevate the discourse of how we assess and critique of hands-on-learning and the role ‘making’ plays in architecture, where latent lessons are discovered, skills developed and foster student agency.