Metamorphosis as a sculptural approach to the didactic process of design education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5821/jida.2025.13685Keywords:
architecture workshop, project-based teaching, morphogenetic processes, self-learning, artAbstract
Traditionally, workshops prioritise art and composition in early stages, later replaced by technical and regulatory aspects, often leading to formal automatisms. In contrast, this second-year architecture workshop positions plastic exploration as an intrinsic, triggering dimension of the design process, informed by Goethe’s metamorphosis and delicate empiricism, foundational to phenomenological observation and morphology. Through serial clay modelling of metamorphic processes, students build a form bank that, via abstraction and recomposition, becomes the first traces of an architectural project, ensuring an unconventional germinal formal state. The workshop emphasises plasticity as the seed of the project, enhancing each student’s creative potential and reinforcing a more complete design foundation.
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