PurposeThis paper presents the applied research and design work on innovative and sustainable building products developed by an undergraduate architecture seminar course. It presents the case for innovative uses of cement-based products, while framing the proposals within a global shift toward environmentally responsive and bio-integrated materials.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology utilizes a process of hybridization between digital fabrication and analog making methods that is framed within the larger design discourse and that intersects the digital design process with material know-how. The approach engages local problematics and applies advanced technology and the integration of natural behaviors to develop a rich applied design method.FindingsThrough the presented work and proposed building products, critical findings and outcomes emerge, ones that relate to the design process itself and others to the designed products.Originality/valueThe research presented here proposes novel approaches to cement-based building systems utilizing digital and analog fabrication, and original design solutions that engage with their context and provide active and crucial environmental performance.

When teaching design and architecture in oscillation between practice and academia, we are inescapably bound by questions of context; our environment reflects greatly on us and our perception and forms the basis of our design approach and rhetoric. In teaching, we attempt to engage students in reflecting on, observing and rethinking their contexts. We push them to reflect on new potentials, to re-imagine what is usually widely established. We allow them to create opportunities for new perspectives, and to ponder upon the potential of “other” possibilities that may exist. In Lebanon, a country with end-less problems and infrastructural deterioration, such questioning is unavoidable and becomes crucial to pursue at an academic level, where reality and practice fail to proceed. The academic endeavor takes on the role of the provocateur, the advocator for change, projecting forward with a new imaginary. On the other hand, drawing, architecture’s most powerful medium, has resurged today as an essential thinking tool, able to convey ideas and suggest aspirations. Its role has progressed beyond the limits of representation, becoming fundamental for reflection, conceptualization and advocacy. Its power lies in its recurrent ability to convey meaning visually, which is universally understood.My teaching trajectories try to bring these two together: Drawing and reimagining context. This is especially distilled in a seminar course I teach at the American University of Beirut, titled “Micro/ Macro Infrastructures” that builds upon the potential of architecture representation with speculative proposals for local infrastructural systems, presented through the medium of a pamphlet and articulated to advocate for change through design.

This paper presents the work done during a Vertical Design studio, held at the Department of Architecture and Design in Beirut, and discusses the studio design methods that evoke experimental model making and narrative programming. The work presented develops on themes of locality, landscapes as systems of reference for design, physical constructs as inherent design machines, and fictional narratives as programming devices. Through the use of complex drawings and dynamic models, the studio intervened on the region of Cappadocia in Turkey, with its complex land formations, proposing new visions for a unique site where architecture and landscape coalesce.