This thesis explores the inherent values found in the tradition of making by contrasting the wholistic approach and core impetus of the craftsman with the industrial and consumeristic attributes of western culture. Ideas such as process compartmentalization, task specialization, and planned obsolescence, have degraded our ability to think broadly and engage intimately as workers and users.

 

Through the tectonics of adaptive reuse, this projects seeks to enlist the pedagogy of architecture to explore the place of craft and its values in contemporary society. The program is flexible, but structured into three categories of engagement: the public, the academic, and the professional. The intersection of the three is guided and encouraged by spatial relationships within the structure. In essence, the center will exist to establish and elevate this forgotten tradition; it will serve as an outlet for explorations in the tangible, as to elevate the process of working with all three facets that make us most human: the head, the heart, and the hands.

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