As this is a ‘Learning by Doing’ course, each week will come with a practical section. These challenging ‘hurdles’ will help to inform you about architectural design practice and through this we will assist you with the steps you need to take to jump over it.

The ‘hurdle’ is common to each architect through the design process; the metaphorical challenge being to jump over it, and hopefully you will improve with each jump. By practicing you can test your abilities and hopefully strengthen your own design process.

APPROACHING THE HURDLE

Every architect goes through the initial process of figuring out what the design should be about. There are a number of ways to approach this stage, which often involves collecting inspiration from available sources. This collection could start from magazines, books, the Internet etc. The type of inspiration will vary depending on the architect’s interests and what is appropriate to the design task at hand, but common examples might include art, architecture, nature, music, and many other such things.

Architects often surround themselves with inspirations and gather tools and materials in order to start a new design project. For example, usually they will have a model workshop, a photo-booth, and computers with lots of design software. In this course you do not need to have a fully equipped office. We will start from scratch with what you have available in your house.