Imperfections, disruptions, and conflicts are often perceived as deficiencies. Mistakes, understood as deviations from norms or expected outcomes, are typically regarded as issues to be corrected, resolved, or avoided. Yet, despite the relentless pursuit of perfection, disruptions and errors remain inevitable and often unpredictable. Crucially, mistakes are not objective realities but are shaped by cultural and psychological constructs. Doubt, irritation, and the sense of failure are essential components of learning and integral to any research or development process. However, the prevailing overemphasis on standardization, rigid procedures, and codifed expectations within design and architectural practices frequently inhibits open engagement with mistakes, hindering open-ended development and situational risk-taking. In the context of urgent global challenges such as the climate crisis, resource scarcity, and entrenched social divisions, it is imperative to critically question established conventions. Beyond technological innovation and political intervention, there is a pressing need to cultivate new values and fundamentally rethink the collective production of space.
Making Mistakes investigates how errors and imperfections can act as catalysts for generating new aesthetic, functional, and social perspectives. Rather than treating deviations as failures, the course embraces them as intrinsic and valuable aspects of the creative process and as critical to fostering an inclusive architectural practice. Combining discussions, field research, material studies, and hands-on building workshops, Making Mistakes actively incorporates the possibility of failing during this process. The course engages both theoretically and practically with non-standardized approaches to architecture, exploring "open forms," "glitches," and "intentional imperfections."
Through a collaborative, process-driven methodology, participants investigate the creative opportunities that emerge from relinquishing control, embracing co-creation, navigating compromises, and engaging with the unique qualities of reclaimed materials and existing structures. Making Mistakes develops tools and strategies for embracing uncertainty and improvisation, integrating collective decision-making and the deliberate inclusion of mistakes into the design process, and reframing these as sources of strength. By challenging traditional notions of beauty, authorship, and perfection, the course fosters expressions of imperfection, leading to the creation of designs and spaces that are more interactive, accessible, and hopefully socially relevant.
