If you put the site at the centre of the analysis, several things change at once. Time scales out — design now extends through the duration of the build, not before it. Authorship distributes — no longer “the architect” but a network of decisions, taken by people with different stakes, training, and economic positions. Evidence shifts — drawings still matter, but so do payslips, equipment manuals, the tea break, the back-of-the-shed sketch.
None of this is a methodological prescription. It is a description of what the field does when it does its work well. The pedagogical question that follows is: how do you teach this? Most architectural curricula are organised around the conditions that produce the drawing — the studio, the crit, the portfolio. The site as method asks for a different infrastructure, and most schools do not yet have it.
The Production Pedagogies subgroup is collecting short syllabi, exercise sheets, and field-trip protocols from members who have tried this in their teaching. Send what you have; we will publish a working bibliography in the spring.
