VOLUME 01:

MAKING

VORKURS examines the roots of the University of Florida Graduate School of Architecture in relation to its current pedagogical objectives. Named for the foundation course taught by Josef Albers at the Bauhaus, Florida's graduate publication probes Vorkurs and methods of making not out of nostalgia, but as something of current relevance and necessity for the architecture profession. This initial edition, VORKURS: making, looks to craft and experiential learning as methods for understanding materials and their limitations in the field. It mines the potential for a more fluid future of the profession, one that lies in foundations of making and material processes, to further bridge the gap between academia and practice.

We recognize that our institution has strong historical underpinnings. The first volume of VORKURS is driven by an exploration into how these influences inspire us to draw, to make, and, as Anni Albers states, to "cooperate with the material."1 The current pedagogy develops a process that choreographs the hand and the eye - to know the weight of concrete, the grain of wood, the wrinkle of fabric, the culture of place. This volume challenges current educational and professional conventions. It questions historical traditions to gain a better understanding of what drives the spaces we build, to broaden the possibilities of architecture, and to find innovation in constraints.

Within the first three semesters, the University of Florida Graduate School of Architecture curriculum establishes methods of experiential learning - set between materials and assemblies, program and site - which become the foundational tools for developing individual design processes. The synthesis of these methods becomes the Master's Research Project, which acts not as an ending point, but a point of departure, a moment to find ourselves as designers, to collect our interests both academic and personal, and to frame the way we work in the field.

We aim to speculate in the space between drawing and construct. We appreciate the weight of a line, knowing that the line we draw represents an assembly of materials on a site - how one material meets another, turns a corner, touches the ground, meets the sky. From the delicate touch of a pencil on velum to the insertion of a post into a freshly dug hole, our goal is to remember to have as much fun in practice as we have in school.

We seek to identify the extraordinary in the mundane and recognize that every aspect of a project has the potential to be playful.

- Elizabeth Cronin and Zachary Wignail

1 Anni Albers, “Design: Anonymous and Timeless” (1947), as quoted by Brenda Danilowitz in her essay ,in this volume, "Pure Forms Will Never Bore Us.”