Practice Making

Studio Leaders: Christo van der Hoven, Christian Greyling & Niel Crafford

This studio will explore the relationship between technology and practitioners to establish new ways of working. Through conceptualising building technology at the inception of a project, the full integration of design and construction can prompt exploration, drive innovation and lead to novel design solutions. 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 (EBTs) can help to expand the boundaries of current building practice, to include low-tech local traditional technologies (eg. vernacular 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 more widely used in high-income economies. In addition to this, the inherent value of emerging building technology (EBTs) can contribute to making projects more versatile, economical, contextually responsive and socially responsible. In this quarter, the studio will specifically embrace the new structural, spatial and ecological possibilities of mass timber construction (MTC).