For Outré West, Design Build students developed three distinct architectural installations that re-envision, and re-create works by architects Mickey Muennig and Donald MacDonald which engaged directly with the curatorial vision of the exhibition. The work was produced within Gibbs Collective Creating, a year-long immersive design build seminar and multiple independent studies. Together, these efforts merged conceptual inquiry with advanced fabrication practice, aligning with the American School’s ethos of experimentation, regional responsiveness, and the inseparability of making and thinking.
Across all three works, the seminar explored the transformation of monolithic, masonry, and timber precedents into planar material strategies. Designs were digitally modeled, unfolded, and milled from flat plywood sheets, with most joinery fabricated from custom plasma-cut steel components. This approach celebrated material economy, fabrication logic, and the artistry of reduction, minimizing complexity while amplifying precision and craft.
Spatial Roles
Threshold Structure – Serving as the primary entry sequence, this full-scale fabricated portal distilled the tectonic language of stone and heavy timber into a digitally rationalized plywood assembly. Its sweeping, arched geometry framed the first encounter with the exhibition while subtly choreographing movement, sightlines, and thematic tone.
Transitional Gateway – Positioned as the concluding threshold, this structure mediated the visitor’s departure, echoing the conceptual framework of the opening piece while shifting material emphasis and spatial compression to create a reflective moment before exit.
City Sleeper
A precise, full-scale replica of Donald MacDonald’s City Sleeper, translated the architect’s portable shelter concept into a contemporary fabrication workflow. Students reverse-engineered the original design, developing CNC-cut plywood and steel joinery systems to create a modular kit-of-parts that could be rapidly assembled and disassembled.
Pedagogical Synthesis
Each project blends strong design ideas, with hands-on skills to transform digital concepts into physical form, and practical decision-making about materials and how they’re used. Through iterative prototyping, rationalization of geometries, and careful resource management, students engaged with architectural making as both a technical process and a creative act. The resulting installations operate simultaneously as exhibition infrastructure, sculptural presence, and design research, blurring disciplinary boundaries between architecture, fabrication, and art.
Gibbs Collective Creating remains a cornerstone of our Design Build curriculum, championing the integration of hands-on making, digital innovation, and collaborative authorship. By working at the intersection of concept and construction, our students develop a resilient design intelligence, one that values material honesty, embraces constraint as a driver of form, and treats the act of building as a mode of inquiry.
Process
