The start of our experience at Workshop Holzbau in Trondheim was somewhat veiled in exhaustion, after missing our connecting flight in Oslo and a long, overnight train journey. However, right from the beginning the atmosphere of the workshop has been inspirational and professional, everyone getting involved with asking serious questions about complex issues ranging from "what is a staircase" to "how is it to sit".
The activity that has resonated with me the most so far is the 'user experience' session that was run at the beginning of the day yesterday. In this activity we took turns to create and become a character who would use the stair in the future. We did this after a day of conceptualising in the studio the day before, and I think it was interesting to see the juxtaposition between studio work and role-play in context. Some of the ideas we thought were the strongest in the studio became obsolete when thinking about an 84 year old with a bad hip moving across the site.
Today, we are translating the concept we have carefully developed over the past 2 days into a structural/constructional detail that we can realise with the materials available. My own strengths lie in conceptualising, so I am looking forward to learning how others think about translating concepts into structure. I am excited to see where the project will be at the end of the day.