The course aims to provide competency into understanding and selecting the right kind of materials for making specific objects or spaces. Students will learn to look at materials from points of view of access, reuse, and the ways in which they can be worked on. Students will learn to discern affordances that different media such as wood, plastic, metal, bamboo offer in terms of their manipulability, form making and their other structural characteristics. They will also begin to learn the use of tools — hand, power and computer controlled. The last would require them to learn the basics of 3^d modelling using appropriate software.

While the course will largely focus on these materials, we will have space in the course to also use materials that have contemporary relevance such as lantana, banana fibre, water hyacinth, etc. which may change from year to year. This will depend on the availability of having visiting craftspeople/​designers with experience in working these materials.