Practice Making

Studio leader: Cobus Bothma

The studio will explore the relationship between technology and practitioner to establish new ways of working. Through conceptualising building technology at the inception of a project, the full integration of design and construction can lead to exploration and innovation. Technology will be considered as a generator of form, in what has the potential to lead to expressive form. Klinger (2001: 240) states that “expressive form challenges prevailing ideas of architecture, as well the limits of understanding in engineering by encouraging the development of innovative fabrication solutions”. A focus on emerging building technology can help to expand the boundaries of current building practice, to include low-tech local traditional technologies (eg. indigenous technologies) that are considered as developed but that have not found mainstream application, to high-tech global technologies (eg. digital manufacturing) that are developing in the South African condition but common practice in other contexts. In addition to this, the inherent value of emerging building technology can contribute to making projects more versatile, economical, contextually responsive and socially responsible. This quarter the studio will specifically embrace the new structural and ecological possibilities of wood construction.