The third annual conference School of Architecture 2024: By Head and By Hands is organised by the Institute of Design II. The aim is to share current approaches to teaching through projects that students design and build themselves, and to find a way forward for design-build programs in the Czech Republic.
"We want to broaden the discussion on interdisciplinary teaching methods and the connection between creation, research and practice-oriented teaching. I believe that the contributions of foreign guests and the practical experience of students will contribute to a more systematic involvement of design-build projects in teaching not only at our school," says Dalibor Hlaváček, Dean of CTU Faculty of Architecture.
The conference will open on 11 April with a lecture on The Latent Potential of the Mundane by Rick Sommerfeld, a leading teacher of design-build projects in the United States, who will work as a Fulbright Specialist at Czech Technical University in April.
Sommerfeld leads the ColoradoBuildingWorkshop at the University of Denver. The program educates male and female students through small-scale design and construction. The collaborative and hands-on projects are often logistically challenging typologies with remote building sites and almost no architectural precedent. The students are harnessing the potential of these seemingly mundane projects and their work is bringing global recognition.
Since the program's inception in 2009, Sommerfeld and his students have designed and built more than 50 structures. These include a research station in Antarctica (2023), toilets on Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park (2018), and a set of cabins for Colorado's Outward Bounds School (2015-2016). The realizations have been published globally and have won numerous awards, including international ones.
Three other speakers will offer international experience: design-build education pioneer Michael Hughes, former head of the architecture department at the American University in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, and Marie and Keith Zawistowski from ENSA Grenoble in France. They had previously worked at Virginia Tech in the United States for a number of years and became involved in design-build teaching after participating as students in the Rural Studio project led by Samuel Mockbee. At ENSA, they run the designbuildLAB and co-founded the onSITE office.
The conference and the lecture will take place at the Faculty of Architecture, CTU, Thákurova 9, Prague 6. The lecture by Rick Sommerfeld will take place on 11 April at 18.00 in the lecture room 155 Gočár, the conference on 12 April on 9.00-16.30 in the aquarium 152/153. Teachers and students are welcome to attend the talk without submitting an abstract. For more information, please contact Šárka Malošíková: sarka.malosikova@fa.cvut.cz. The conference is organized with the support of the FA CTU and the grant number SVK 57/24/F5.
Photos of ColoradoBuildingWorkshop projects are available here.
Photos of designbuildLAB projects here.
