The Builder Method - action-oriented educational approaches in architecture

The Builder Method - action-oriented educational approaches in architecture research and innovative methodology development project network is coordinated by Hello Wood Ltd. (HU) with the partnership of Stowarzyszenie Architektow Polskich Oddzial w Poznaniu - SARP (PL), Groupe Ecole Supérieure du Bois and Martial Marquet Studio (F), Szechenyi István University (HU) and Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (R). The partnership undertakes to develop a new methodology of an alternative, presence and action-based architectural education with curricula supplementary purpose of the existing architectural programmes. The Builder Method - as it is transmitted - builds 3 things: objects / buildings, communities, and personality. The fund-assets of the Builder Method are the presence and the building-process. Architecture is a fine combination of disciplines, targets, paradigms, entities and realism, it is an attitude, mindset more than a profession and that is the message the Builder Method is trying to broadcast. Builders care for their environment, they prefer hand-build objects, they are capable of creating while forming themselves and preserving the environmental context they navigate in. They are fully aware of the materials they use, the impact they make and community they belong to. They really think global but act local.The holistic principle of the Builder Method project is to give and to educate, to help with a tool to individuals (students, teachers, architects, non-architects) to learn about themselves, to develop their skills and personality and to get connected with an ancient human competence: the competence to create and hand-build. The primary target group of the project is those open-minded, experimenting professionals, artists, architects, educators who are willing to revolutionize firstly the architectural education in Europe and on the long-run in different field of higher education as an experience creating, point-of-view shaping, community building and self-development educational tool for every disciplines. The project aims to form attitudes and point of views not only in the primary target group of the outputs but with a high accent on the secondary target group: the future students of architecture. The Builder Method project firstly aims to produce a well-elaborated, open source methodology (Builder Method Matrix) for out-of-the classroom education on the field of architecture with outstanding, distinguishing essences like community building, spirit and philosophy transmitting and contextual pedagogy to the primary target group of the project: the architectural educators.Secondly the partnership’s goal output-wise is to publish a so-called Installation manual analyzing and structuring all the relevant (based on the shared experiences of the partnership) small and middle scale (mainly wooden) installations with know-hows about material-, assembly-, constractional needs for educational purposes. At last but not least it plans to build a database of Builder projects, a collection, analysis and synthesis of like minded initiatives from all over the world visualized on an interactive map to establish good practices for those who seek to study similar initiatives which are socially rooted, environmentally reactive and presence conscious.