DIY Robots in Architecture

Four-day workshop, Detmolder Räume 2026

Students at laptops with robot kits in a TH OWL studio during the workshop — **Fig.** The studio on day three — every table a workbench

DIY Robots in Architecture was a four-day intensive workshop during the Detmolder Räume week at the Detmold School of Design, TH OWL. I led it with Yusuf Aykin and Prof. Hans Sachs for sixteen participants drawn from all of the design courses — architecture, interior architecture and the integrated design master.

No prior programming or robotics experience was required, which was the point. Students built, assembled, programmed and iterated their own robotic tools and vehicles out of low-cost, open-source hardware: Arduino-powered rovers at one end of the room, self-assembled robotic arms at the other. The workshop ran on a DIY and prototyping ethos, using cheap and accessible technology as a way into automated design processes rather than as an end in itself.

By the end of the week a large proportion of the bachelor students were programming independently — from no code at all on Monday. That, more than any one machine that drove across a table, is what the four days were for.

Type: Workshop — taught
Role: Workshop lead, with Yusuf Aykin and Hans Sachs
When: May 2026, Detmolder Räume week
Module: BA6010 · 4 ECTS · 2 SWS
Participants: 16, from all design disciplines
Where: Detmold School of Design, TH OWL
Hardware: Arduino, open-source kits, self-assembled arms

Open-source robotics kit laid out on a table: microcontroller boards, servos, jumper wires, battery packs and sensors in bags — **Fig.** A kit before it is anything — boards, servos, wire

Tracked rover chassis part-assembled on a workbench beside its box and a partly built gripper — **Fig.** A tracked rover part-way through assembly

How the four days ran

Each day paired a short input with a long build. Students started from a working example — a motor that turns, a sensor that reads — and then changed it until it did something they had chosen themselves. Debugging was done at the table, out loud, which is how the room taught itself faster than we could have taught it.

Because the hardware was cheap and open, nobody was afraid of it. A broken part was a part you replaced, not a piece of laboratory equipment you had to apologise for — and that is what let people who had never written a line of code take a machine apart on the second morning.

What came out of it

Arduino-powered rovers
Self-assembled robotic arms
Custom end-effectors
Sensor-driven behaviours
Students programming independently

Students working at laptops with robot kits and cables spread across studio tables — **Fig.** Working session — laptops, kits and a lot of cable

A participant writing code on a laptop next to a small model building rigged with electronics — **Fig.** Programming a prototype on the last day Workshop photographs from the TH OWL MID/CAAD news story ROBOTs at DETMOLDER RÄUME, 19 May 2026.