Grab bag: a methodology for project analysis

Abstract

In project workshops, analytical exercises are organized with a focus on producing strategies and methods toward the project. But, are projects delineated solely through these analytical approaches? The longed-for operative mediation between analysis and design must not dilute their values, but rather to intertwine them, oscillating between their dual practice.This approach upholds the premise that the best form of analysis is to design a project—framing a series of exercises conceived as micro-projects which, without a specific assignment, will shape students’ projective intuitions. These experiences are defined as a collection of essays, of memories, but primarily of drawings that are stored in a drawer to later be redirected, discarded again, or transformed. We call those drawers a grab bag: a mechanism that, by drawing on previous experiences, always bets on the current project—and the one that will follow.