Waterplay: Sensibility of Materiality in Sustainable Design Pedagogy

This paper explores nature’s materiality within design pedagogy, encouraging a shift away from visual-centric architecture towards a focus on human experience and the natural environment. This study discusses a design pedagogy based on experiential learning, emphasizing knowledge gained from direct experience in a natural outdoor setting. A direct encounter with water, a natural material, is chosen as a medium for the journey of discovery. Through tactile interaction, visual observation, auditory immersion, and olfactory encounters, the water behaviour, texture, sound, and its interplay with human sense, emotion, and perception are examined. This pedagogical strategy aims to enhance sensibility of materiality which will benefit design process. The study demonstrates how this approach can promote empathy, insight, and creativity fostering design solutions that can benefit both people and the natural environment. In the end, this paper put forward that a sensibility of materiality should be the basis of sustainable design pedagogy.