Thinking Through Making Workshop MArch

DATE

21.11.2025

This week marks the start of the Thinking Through Making Workshop, where students explore the creation of models as a key tool in the architectural design process.

Throughout the sessions, they work with different techniques and materials to bring their ideas to life, encouraging creativity and spatial understanding from the conceptual phase to the materialization of the project. This approach allows them to connect thought and action, understanding architecture not only as an outcome but as a continuous process of exploration.

Model-making is an essential part of the learning process, as it transforms abstract concepts into physical representations that make it easier to understand spatial and structural relationships. This exercise, based on the idea of “thinking with the hands”, enhances creativity and the ability to solve problems in a tangible way. By building models, students discover details that might go unnoticed in a drawing, thus improving the precision and coherence of their designs.

The workshop is supported by the theory developed by Juhani Pallasmaa in his book The Thinking Hand, where the act of building is understood as a form of reflection. Students experiment with different materials and techniques, from sculpture and plastic arts to the fundamentals of casting, exploring how ideas take shape through manual work. This process strengthens not only their technical skills, but also their ability to synthesise and their sensitivity to materials.

Through Thinking Through Making students of the MArch programme delve into the transition between the idea and its materialisation, understanding that each project is defined as much by its thinking as by its execution. This practical exercise allows them to develop a deeper and more conscious vision of the architectural process, preparing the ground for future proposals where design is understood as a search between the conceptual and the tangible.