Mock-up / junk lab: hands on practice as an experience in creating a new material

MOCK – UP / JUNK LAB is a semester experiment within the Architectural Workshop course (9th semester), aimed at encouraging research and expanding knowledge about sustainable materials and their potential use in contemporary architectural and artistic practices. The specificity of the task requires a specific method (hands-on practice), where students, by exploring materials, come to new insights and acquire new skills, which significantly differs from traditional educational methods. The new knowledge acquisition experience is based on interdisciplinarity, which integrates both technical and artistic knowledge. By investigating the local context, students map a problem that can become a resource for creating a new material sample. In this sense, reuse gains a new value as a building material, which, in the final stage of research, becomes a usable product. Throughout the research process, the focus is on sustainability methods, ecological principles, participation, social responsibility, as well as the evaluation of the afterlife period.