Design Studio: Architecture & Craft (F20)

ARCH-5505 – Design Studio: Architecture & Craft – Fall 2020
This optional graduate Design Studio, selected by each student, examines issues of craft in architecture. Studying the history of manual craft and digital craft forms a foundation for positioning the specific design studio project. The studio focuses on the making of building details; other times it focuses on the methods of production that lead to craft. Vernacular buildings and building systems are introduced as case studies and references. The notion of craft in architecture allows building details to become generators of the larger architectural project.

Course taught by Randall Kober.

ASG-3 - Final Project

This class proposes designs for structures along a 38 kilometer hiking trail on the north shore of the North Channel of Lake Huron. The trail heads are at Sagamok Anishnawbek and White Fish River First Nation. LaCloche Provincial Park, a non-operating provincial park, and LaCloche Ridge Conservation Reserve lie between. The trail connects to Killarney Provincial Park to the east.

Each student proposed a series of interventions along the trail at various scales from furniture to overnight accommodations. Exacting 3D computer models were made in this remote delivery Craft Studio to virtually build. Pre-industrial timber building typologies were studied and modeled at the beginning of the design process.

Research, design processes and final proposals are collected in a series of short books which will be used to search for community and financial support. There is the very real possibility that some of the design proposals will be built in the future.

Projects are presented from West to East on the trail.