Sasson Rafailov, a current PhD student and an instructor at University of Virginia was invited to VMDO as part of Design Thursday series to talk about his research, and the current class he teaches in the School of Architecture. His talk not only focused on design pedagogy and its trajectory, but also tackled matters of agency in design, material consciousness and understanding of the world through a post humanist lens of temporality.
A maker as well as an academic, Sasson exercises his theory through practice of wood working and sculpting. This allows him to stay connected with his body, mind, spirituality, and the material beings of the mediums he works with. This conscious practice acts as the anchor of his talk, as he led VMDO’ers through the findings on his contemplative journey.
He prologues his research by explaining the posthuman understanding of human. Among many questions, one key questions the participants were given to think about was the connection, or lack thereof between mind, and the body. Seeing humans as a collective agency of various systems, he agrees with the thought that humans are never 100% “human”. From the microorganisms that live on our skin and keeping it healthy against diseases, to our nervous system reacting in highly specific and sometimes unpredicted ways to the stimuli our body and mind receives suggests that our bodies exist of parts that have their own agency, or consciousness, and by understanding that by this collaboration we can stay healthy and happy, we can also start to think about how are the things outside of our skin affect our body, and mind. Sasson proposes that each material used in architecture inherently affects our lives. Wood, metal, glass, stone all play a different role in how we perceive a space, and ultimately affect how our mind/body systems react. From our mental to physical status, our material environments (be it natural or manmade) plays an imperative role in shaping our health and being. Therefore, as designers, and crafts people, the connection and dialogue we build with our material world becomes even more important. If we accept that materials have inherent agency on how we craft the world around us, our interaction with them becomes more crucial. By understanding materials with all our senses, and accept the material’s existence and purpose as a conscious agency, we may be able to start being more aware of ourselves and our minds, reach a higher spiritual fulfillment, and ultimately create objects or spaces that respect the materials and the land.
On the topic of respect, and material consciousness, Sasson talks about his research on indigenous cultures whose interaction with the world outside their body is very different from the western understanding. He gives particular examples from indigenous American cultures, and research papers that talk about this topic, one of the paper’s he provides as an example states: “Non-natives most often employ the verb ‘to take’ to describe hunting; this is the verb employed in Federal subsistence legislation: ‘fish and wildlife resources taken for personal or family consumption (US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) 2006). But the Koyukon believe that hunters do not ‘take’ anything; instead, animals choose to give themselves to the hunter. The‘gift’ is made as a result of the ‘luck’ of the hunter and a hunter has luck when he has been respectful.” Orville and Huntington, p. 261. With this understanding, we can also allow ourselves to realize that the things “we take” from the environment actually have their own agencies, on how they choose to “gift” themselves to us. This practice also apparent in some lumber gathering communities, where the practice the communities employ only allow them to take the tree’s that already have fallen due to age, sickness or other natural causes, further highlighting the stance taken towards nature, and flipping humans interaction with it from being a transaction, to a symbiosis.
Sasson then introduces the participants to the course he is currently teaching. Titled “Lessons in Making”, this course serves as the first studio course to freshmen architecture students. Originally more focused in 2D mediums and teaching the fundamentals of architectural drawing, abstraction, interpretation; Sasson has the students focus on three dimensional making, and material consciousness. The first assignment tasks students to collect branches from a tree of their selection and make their own charcoal pencil. The students are then asked to make their own paper from recycled paper waste and create a line drawing using their charcoal pens. These drawings then are interpreted into physical models using different materials such as wood, plaster, metal and paper. This exercise helped them learn how different materials require different construction methods, and lead to different expressions of space.
Students instead of presenting their works to a group of professors, which is common practice in architecture school’s worldwide, they were tasked to present their works to the tree they have selected to gather fallen branches from in their first assignment. This practice not only eases students into getting used to presenting their work, without the stress of a group of professors watching them, but more importantly helped them understand the agency the specific tree has taken in shaping student’s interpretation and artistic expression. With the “gift” the tree has given them, student’s were “allowed” to complete their assignments meanwhile being conscious of the actors that play a role in shaping their final works.
After his talk, the discussion opened to questions and answers from with many VMDO’ers excited to understand further on how this conscious act of crafting can be further applied into the professional industry. This talk was organized as the first of a series that is expected to start in 2025, by VMDO’s Model Making Task Force. This internal Task Force’s mission is to create a stronger culture of making physical models at VMDO, and reinforce firm’s commitment to craft.
