Engaging Buildings: Crafting Interventions for a Changing Environment

Abstract

This thesis explores how human-scale interventions and craftsmanship can be critical components of a built environment for agency and expression through change and adaptation of space. By implementing spatial interventions on the NSCAD campus, this work aims to demonstrate how such environments can embrace change. Architecture today rarely encourages or even accounts for user engagement, which neglects creative adaptation, stifles a better understanding of the built environment and decreases the potential lifespan of a building. By reading NSCAD’s historical campus, incorporating woodworking and employing a collaborative design approach, this collection of interventions aims to explore and analyze the potential of human-scale engagement on the built environment.