Despite the fact that the process of generating architecture and realizing it in the contemporary paradigm is seamless, compartmentalized teaching of subject areas in contemporary architecture in most schools worldwide does not allow students to grasp this continuity. As a consequence, both projects in the school studio and their respective virtual materiality and materialization, but also later on in practice suffer from the lack of this understanding leading to the perpetual compromise between the architect and the manufacturer or rather between concept and end product.
This project ran for a semester and the background of the students could enable them to envisage a digital state of a virtual spatial product, with no anticipation of any materialization strategy.
In Aristotle University's department of architecture, which is encapsulated in a School of Engineering, materiality is, however, an issue that hinders students’ creativity and is counterproductive to their imagination. In this context the F2F-Continuum Research Project was exploited to test how our students’ perceptions on the seamless process would change if they worked with real building industries outside the school context and limitations and how their interaction with other schools around Europe would enhance, enrich and encourage this learning experience. The idea that architects could diffuse to working positions through all “the construction industry” and also control the whole manufacturing process through computers was one of our premises for this teaching experiment. The ultimate aim was to reinstate in the minds of the students the perception of the architect information master builder.