Conference Agenda

This paper presents the design and building of an experimental pavilion using a novel technique of extruded cob manufacture. Design Research is presented as the co-exploration of a sequence of semi-controlled variables by a shifting body of researchers, facilitators, students, and makers where authorship becomes suffused amongst these collaborators. This co-created knowledge is rightly presented as a paper co-authored by the student interns and academics involved. Phases of architectural design, material investigation, manufacture, and construction are discussed as an episodic series of inter-connected prototyping dialogues between human, machine, and material actors; and as emergent making where embodied knowledge is inherent in the processes of manufacture and construction. In ‘Cob Club’ - situated between UWE’s Centre For Print Research and School of Architecture & Environment - design research proceeded as a series of foolish exchanges that reveal the creative benefits of unmanaged collaborative spaces within the rational processes of research institutions.