Design + Make explores design at the point of physical production.

The AA’s satellite Hooke Park campus is Design + Make's headquarters for architectural research through 1:1 fabrication. Supported by a diverse team of expert practitioners, students of the MArch/MSc programme inhabit an environment that combines, forest, studio, workshop and building site. Hooke Park's large-scale fabrication facilities act as a testing ground where develop hands-on research through prototyping.

The programme's core agenda is to advance the materialisation of architecture through the synthesis of advanced technologies, craft techniques, and deep understanding of natural material. The key proposition is that new digital design and fabrication technologies enable traditional making techniques to be re-invented. Emerging tools such as digital 3D scanning, generative modeling and robotic fabrication provide new opportunities for replicating the feedback between natural geometry, material properties and designed form that had previously connected designer, maker and the artefact.

MArch students use 1:1 prototyping at Hooke Park as a vehicle for design research. Formulating individual research interests alongide collective build activities, each student reflects critically on aspects of the work in their thesis. MSc students have a more explicit technological focus on the innovative application of timber in architecture, which is developed and tested through full-scale prototypes.