In the making: pedagogies from MARS

This paper reflects on experience gained through MARS (Making Architecture Research Studio) at the University of Nottingham. It argues for a densification of design teaching and learning through a direct, practical and tactile engagement with materials and making. It sets out the pedagogical benefits of exploring and theorising the practical, combined with the value and relevance of material practices. As a methodology of design teaching it suggests a multi-level, synergistic approach to pedagogy and practice that can build key knowledge and skills while avoiding a narrowly instrumental view of architectural education and practice. A key aim of the pedagogy of the studio is the development of an empathetic imagination, as clearly articulated by William Hazlitt (1805) inAn Essay on the Principles of Human Action:

The imagination, by means of which alone I can anticipate future objects, or be interested in them, must carry me out of myself into the feelings of others by one and the same process by which I am thrown forward as it were into my future being.