Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Digital technologies allow unprecedented levels of complexity in tooling and production and, as a consequence, the creation of nonstandard products and highly crafted surfaces is becoming increasingly routine. The use of digital technologies is becoming more prevalent in the teaching of design and is rapidly replacing active making and traditional crafts and techniques. In order to strike a proper balance between these extremes, a graduate level design-built studio was created to combine the traditional crafts of knotting and weaving with digital technologies in the production of a Birdwatching Hideout along the LaSalle River in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Under the direction of a local artist, traditional knotting and weaving skills were developed and applied in the studio to the architectonics of the Hideout. In parallel, parametric modelling, coupled with traditional crafting skills, was used to determine the form of the structure. The resultant structure, entitled “Murmurate”, extends, facilitates and consolidates bodies in natural, cultural, and manmade environments. Active making and crafts have a prominent place in student learning and, more importantly, they work to bridge design theory and praxis. This paper looks at the effectiveness of the methodology of space making by utilizing a mixture of traditional and digital technologies, discusses the spatiality of the outcome as a hybrid interiority which exists at the threshold condition of interiors and nature and argues that the reciprocity between the active making, materiality, and interiors plays a critical role in the development of the notion of the primacy of interiors in the built environment.