Starting from ‘I Don’t Know’ documents a 2011 week-long workshop at Sitterwerk, St. Gallen, in which Studio Mumbai’s Bijoy Jain joined expert craftspeople from Switzerland to share the knowledge, techniques, and insights from their own practices with students, artists, and architects. The interviews in this book explore the creative potential of hands-on learning, local knowledge, and open experimentation. Celebrating the role of chance and collaboration in the process of making, Starting from ‘I Don’t Know’ makes an argument for bringing together the oft-separated areas of architecture and craft early in the design process.
Samuel P. Smith, born in 1981 and raised in Basel, studied music at Yale University and architecture at ETH Zurich. He interned at architecture firms in New York, Buenos Aires, Zurich, and Tokyo, and worked for Peter Zumthor from 2012 to 2014. In 2014, he started his own practice. http://www.smith-studio.ch/