Thinking Through Making: Ornamental Block Prototypes for Tropical Architecture

Contemporary vernacular architecture has increasingly lost skilled labor in the local construction industry, yet digital manufacturing machinery can assist in bringing back the craft and singularity of specialized projects that would otherwise require the assistance of the master builder. Readily available to architecture students, designers and ‘makers’ in general, novel prototyping techniques can infuse projects with a ‘design + build’ mentality. Thinking through making at the small scale of rudimentary building blocks can be a design strategy to introduce both theory and practice to the education of the architect. Recently completed coursework consisting of explorations on the variations of concrete ‘ornamental block’, a perennial component of building in Puerto Rico, opens a dialogue on the pedagogical practices and opportunities of design + build in tropical architecture. Four student projects will be presented, alongside global case studies that emphasize design considerations such as security, fencing, privacy, passive ventilation and shading strategies, as well as the fabrication techniques of mold-making and the performative aspects and constraints of the material, in this case, concrete. A discussion of the use of computer-controlled cutting, printing and milling machines, vacuum forming, mylar sheet folding patterns, foam carvings, and textile formwork explorations as micro-manufacturing techniques to the means of iterative prototype production will be brought forward as a way to expand and rethink the education of the architect to include technical knowhow and entrepreneurial opportunities in building.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7