All this feeling. All this sensing. All this experience. All this expression. What are we going to do with all this being?  
Studio Moments

ARTEFACT HOUSE
An Architecture-is-More Studio Experience
DSGN 404 is a foundational architecture studio that positions architecture as a relational, cultural, and critically conscious practice. Rather than approaching architecture as the production of isolated objects, the studio frames architectural work as the shaping of relationships - contingent, situated, and inseparable from the social, ecological, material, and cultural forces with which it is entangled. Students work across multiple scales - ranging from the body and interior conditions to buildings, sites, and larger territorial systems - to understand how architectural decisions shape and are shaped by broader contexts. Artefact House is an architecture-is-more studio experience led by designer and educator, Joshua Clarke (B.Eng, M.Arch). Joshua’s work intersects multiple disciplines and mediums: architecture, visual communication, artefact-making, creative direction, research and education. A diverse range of professional and educational experiences as helped shape his understanding of the relationships between human psychology, landscape, culture, and the built environment. At the core of Joshua’s work is an enduring interest in how humans change, how we change the world, and how the world, in turn, changes us.

Studio Phases

BEING Prompt 1 → Matter Matters
Prompt 2 → Mixed Matter

PLACE Prompt 3 → Situated
Prompt 4 → Possibilities

entanglement Prompt 5 → Architecturalized Possibilities

together Prompt 6 → Coalesce


The Final Exchange Wed. April 15

AH-HA Workshop

The Entanglement Matrix
Studio Library
DSGN 404: Disciplinary Studio in Architecture (Winter 2026)
Bachelor of Design in City Innovation
University of Calgary

Instructor
Joshua Clarke

Third-Year Design Students
Amani-Safaa Bhatti
Zernaab Nisar
HONG KONG
Silver Castillo
Daniel Snell
TIBLISI
John Paul (JP) Echavez
Sheena Xu
EDINBURGH
Maddy Lamb
Zuha Shahadat
Denis Rosales Becerra
MEDELLIN
Hayley Miller
Jalyna Neudorf
REYKJAVIK
Grayson Moore
Jesse Starchuk
 KATHMANDU
Zyad Rachdi
Alex Simard
 GIBRALTAR
Carola Ramirez
Allysen Stachiw
 PONCE
Phase One BEING
Prompt 1: Matter Matters
Prompt 2: Mixed Matter

Inspo Before architecture becomes drawings, models, or buildings, it is first lived. It is experienced through the body, the senses, memory, emotion, and attention. We are always already in relationship with space, material, light, sound, and others - long before we attempt to shape them. Phase One asks you to slow down and become aware of these relationships.

This phase is about sensitization. It is about learning to notice how the built environment touches you and how you, in turn, touch the world. Architecture is not something that exists “out there,” separate from us; it is a relational field that emerges between inner experience and outer conditions. BEING invites you to attend to that field.  It asks you to cultivate awareness of how space, material, texture, scale, and atmosphere shape feeling, behavior, and meaning - and how your own values, sensitivities, and ways of perceiving shape how you encounter architecture.
 Architecture is never neutral. It always carries values, whether your conscious of them or not. BEING helps you begin to recognize the values embedded in the spaces you inhabit, and to reflect on the values you carry into your own work. 

Phase One introduces the idea of praxis: the ongoing movement between reflection and action. You will observe, document, write, draw, photograph, and make. These acts are not separate from thinking; they are forms of thinking. Through them, you will begin to translate lived experience into material gestures and spatial relationships. Reflection informs making, and making becomes a way of reflecting back on experience...

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Student(s)Prompt
Phase
Amani-Safaa BhattiMatter Matters
Being


Persistence‘”How does persistent interaction with a space shape emotional connections, memories and meaningfulness within architecture?”
Zernaab Nisar Matter Matters
Being


Evolution“Let the city evolve. But let it speak. Let form carry memory and innovation hold respect.”
Amani-Safaa & Zernaab Mixed Matter
Being

Silver Castillo Matter Matters
Being


Empathy“How can architecture cultivate attention rather than avoidance?”
Daniel Snell Matter Matters
Being


Bond“In what ways can architecture be manipulated in order to curate a persisting social bond?”
Silver & Daniel Mixed Matter
Being


John Paul (JP) Matter Matters
Being


Outlier“How can architecture appreciate the outliers in society through the built environment?”


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