make-do
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make-do is an art/architecture practice that conducts r(esearch)&d(esign)d(evelop-
ment) about the impact that architecture has on people. We look at architecture as a
medium through which behaviours, activities and experiences are evoked. Our aim is to
make this communicative power of architecture or objects flow over into social behav-
iour, resulting in interaction and exchange between people.

We aim to expand this communicative power of architecture by investigating our con-
temporary everyday social, spatial and technological contexts and extracting their ex-
periential and aesthetic relevance. Aesthetic means for us not “visual” but the variety
of effects an architectural object can have on people.

Also because the main forces of creative innovation are often outside the discipline of
architecture we see it as our task as architects to harness these various forms of social,
technological and design innovations for extending and adjusting the communicative
power of architecture to our contemporary needs. As architects we ask ourselves: How
can everyday social phenomena, new technologies, economic models, client design
briefs etc. give more? How can they heighten the way our architecture communicates
and relates to us?

Being resourceful, or “making do,” is central to our working attitude. We enjoy the
challenge of working with real constraints, with limited means, and searching for the
simple architectural intervention that can have big social and/or experiential impact.

Since it’s founding in 2007 by Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis, make-do collab-
orators have included physicists, dancers, choreographers, experts in sustainable/solar
technologies, universities, scholars /theoreticians, landscape architects, urban design-
ers and industry.