Design and Make is based at the AA’s satellite campus at Hooke Park, a rich context which serves as an immersive laboratory for architectural research. Students study within a working forest, inhabiting a unique environment in which landscape, studio, workshop, forestry and 1:1 fabrication are interwoven. The landscape, as both material library and site, is critical to the design process and our experimental constructs are nested carefully into the tissue of the working forest. 

In this weekend programme, participants work together to recreate the ‘wonderful laboratory’ of the Full Moon Theatre – a project initiated by Humbert Camerlo and Peter Rice that resulted in an open-air theatre performance exclusively illuminated by the light of the moon. Camerlo and Rice held their experiment in the early 1990s in a remote valley in the foothills of the Cévennes in the south of France; now, we will fabricate a new version of the Full Moon Theatre at Hooke Park, laying the foundations for the laboratory to continue and for more Full Moon Theatres to be created.

This week-long residential workshop takes place each summer and is part of the AA and MAEDA’s Japan Study Programme, which comprises short courses in different rural and urban contexts in Japan and the UK.

Part of the AA Visiting School, this intensive two-week programme focuses on the physical production of experimental architecture at Hooke Park. Participants work on active projects and experience many aspects of timber building – from forestry operations and traditional building methods to innovative robotic fabrication – all while staying on-site in the idyllic forest setting of Westminster Lodge and enjoying home-cooked meals in our Refectory.