Human capacity for making is incredibly diverse and both reflects the fundamental structures of society and contributes to their formation. There is a reciprocal relationship between fabrication and prevailing ideas about aesthetics, economy, politics, religion, and technology. As a result, all objects are embedded in ‘spheres of implication’ and are entangled in the networks of people and concepts that shaped them. Understanding existing things, appreciating their genesis in all its complexity, analysing their value, and respecting their significance, is at the core of the programme. However, this is not only an intellectual exercise, and the programme aims to forge practitioners who are able to work in existing situations, make good judgements about design (in the broadest sense), and bring about change with precision, optimism, and grace.
Conservation is in the title of the programme and can be a problematic term for many architects who associate it with conservatism or understand it to mean preservation, restoration, or stasis. For radical practitioners – who see a pressing need for change – conservation might seem like the wrong path. However, underpinning the programme is a belief that conservation is the directing of continuity and change, that such change must emerge from a nuanced understanding of the world as it is, and that this should embolden practitioners rather than restrict them. The programme covers both the ethics of change, and the technical expertise required to carry it out. It aims to cultivate practical skills and unorthodox forms of practice while also nourishing the historical sense.
There is a growing interest in reuse in direct response to concerns about the environmental impacts of new construction. This sudden suspicion of new build, and reluctance to demolish, is both overdue and strangely familiar to anyone acquainted with architectural practice before the twentieth century. Gardeners might find this new sensitivity ironic because they have always worked with existing circumstances, leveraged found advantages, anticipated change over time, and understood that radical transformation can start in humble ways. The programme sides with the gardeners and promotes a critical approach. Is change necessary? How much change is necessary? How could existing conditions be adapted to a new lifeworld? How might time become an ally? How should practitioners act ethically in a wider capitalist system still fixated on growth?.