The Hands-on Basics of Contemporary Design Education

Learning in the design studio is usually fostered by doing and reflecting on what is done. This paper firstly reiterates that the doing in design is computing, in order to argue for the need for a hands-on design learning even more so in the age of digital curricula. Secondly, it corroborates the importance of tactile involvement in doing, and thus computing, to foster design learning. An experiment is conducted with 15 first year students of architecture the results of which support the argument that hands-on involvement and its interpretation as computing is essential to learning in the studio.