Learning Architectural Design. Material and Immaterial Aspects

Abstract

The following paper investigates the potentials of material based experiment in architectural education. In architecture, the term ‘design’ creates a distinction between the work of architecture in its materiality, and the representation of its underlying concept. At the Faculty of Architecture of KULeuven, campuses Sint-Lucas Brussels and Ghent, the material based courses Form & Colour, Expression and Mixed Media (ca. 1960–2015) challenge this split between idea and material, and argue that architecture can–rather than being taught–be learnt by experience through material based pedagogies. The question becomes twofold: what can students learn from the interaction with material, when it is neither ‘building’ nor ‘design’, and how do materials influence the way we think and depict our thoughts? Following the example of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne, a ‘Mixed Media Atlas’ is created by placing images of student work next to a broad referential spectrum of formally resonating images.