The Architectural Association’s visiting workshop took place once again on 20 and 21 April, with a team of AA tutors conducting half-day sessions of creative teamwork for Instituto de Empresa’s MBA students. The workshop is conducted at IE’s campus in Madrid, where the students are offered a brief exercise in thinking, designing, and making in architectural mode.
The theme for this edition of the workshop was “Anti-Ordinary Urban Furniture”; the challenge: to produce a prototype for an original piece of urban furniture — “prototype” meaning a life-size object made from cheap materials. The object should not be a conventional but rather a unique piece of urban furniture with architectural qualities. The team of AA tutors Christopher Pierce and Christopher Matthews concentrated on a construction method; João Bravo da Costa focused on enclosure.
Using cardboard, cutters, adhesive tape, magazines, markers, and whatever came to hand, the management students were given a taste of a design project — from first ideas to discussion of the final results in 4 hours. Some similarities as well as differences in the work dynamics of management and design eventually emerge, while such skills as creativity, teamwork, and leadership are put to the test.
The IE AA Workshop, together with the AA’s Visiting School in Madrid, is part of an effort to diversify and enhance each school’s education offer and to establish a productive exchange between the disciplines of management and design.
