Teaching Form through Practice

摘要

The best education is one's own experience. Experimenting surpasses studying. To start out by 'playing' develops courage, leads in a natural manner to an inventive way of building and furthers the equally important pedagogical facility of discovery. Inventiveness is the objective. Invention, and reinvention too, is the essence of all creative work (proficiency is a tool and hence is secondary). Instruction in professional techniques inhibits inventiveness (pioneers have often started out as non-professionals) and so our first move is to seek contact with the most general element of all -the material. From this comes the term 'feeling for materials'. So we give the students material to handle, and to ensure that they handle it thoroughly, wherever possible we limit the use of tools. Of course, we have a good variety of tools and other small machines in our basic workshop, but they are kept away from the students at first, especially at the beginning of a new chapter in the work with materials. This forces us to begin thinking and doing on our own without a theoretical introduction, without method and without tools.