Making Mistakes. Exploring Concepts of Imperfection in Spatial Practice

About

Join us in embracing failures, ambiguity, and mistakes as integral parts of a collaborative design process with recycled and as-found materials.

Making Mistakes investigates how errors and imperfections can act as catalysts for generating new aesthetic, functional, and social perspectives. Rather than treating deviations as failures, the course embraces them as intrinsic and valuable aspects of the creative process and as critical to fostering an inclusive architectural practice. Combining discussions, field research, material studies, and hands-on building workshops, Making Mistakes actively incorporates the possibility of failing during this process. The course engages both theoretically and practically with non-standardized approaches to architecture, exploring "open forms," "glitches," and "intentional imperfections."

Through a collaborative, process-driven methodology, participants investigate the creative opportunities that emerge from relinquishing control, embracing co-creation, navigating compromises, and engaging with the unique qualities of reclaimed materials and existing structures. Making Mistakes develops tools and strategies for embracing uncertainty and improvisation, integrating collective decision-making and the deliberate inclusion of mistakes into the design process, and reframing these as sources of strength. By challenging traditional notions of beauty, authorship, and perfection, the course fosters expressions of imperfection, leading to the creation of designs and spaces that are more interactive, accessible, and hopefully socially relevant

Target group

This course is intended for students and graduates in architecture, design, urban and landscape planning, civil engineering, art, scenography, theater studies, and related disciplines. It also welcomes practitioners and activists engaged in or interested in preservation, urban practice, and transformation.

Prerequisites for participation:

Basic knowledge of architecture, public art, urban practice, or related disciplines
Willingness to collaborate in interdisciplinary group settings
Interest in theoretical and practice-based research methods
Basic cra skills for outdoor, hands-on work
English (course language); (German and Portuguese may be used as supplementary languages in specic contexts)

Course aim

Making Mistakes examines both the theoretical and practical dimensions of the concept of “mistakes” within diverse learning formats. The course explores how mistakes can act as productive catalysts for creative processes and innovative thinking. The key learning objectives include:

Developing a critical awareness of the aesthetic, social, and ecological dimensions of building within and transforming existing structures
Fostering collaborative and transdisciplinary approaches to design and construction
Enhancing improvisational skills and exploring new interpretations of materials
Practicing and rening practical crasmanship skills

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