I'd have a project where everyone would recall a material from memory, say brick or metal or burlap sack. Then incorporate one specific property (besides color) of chosen material into a form. I'm curious as to what students choose and why. Plus there's bound to be some good stories to break the ice. 

We did the cube. 

cubes and assorted 9-square exercises.  those were the days, when i was young and innocent, before the influence of diogenes and his dog.

No reason why not to think out of the box, so to speak. What abilities would you like them to attain vide the excercise?

Documentation, of form, landscape , time,  texture (2d, 3d drawings, photography, digital). 

Variations and transformations. Reassembling elements. Gestalt, foreground and background. 

Abstraction between the literal and the associative. 

Transforming systemic and organizational schemes into spatial units

Ergonomics- fleshing out in relation to the body. Needn't be a human body. In fact, it would be more interesting giving them a fantastical creature client, to draw their attention to the specificity of the new body in relation to every element of its environment, doesit walk, crawl, does it fly...how far, angle...document its ergonomical limitations

Model making. 

structural integrity

Diagramatic andwriting skills, clarity of the ideas and linkage of ideas. 

???

Pick a site in a natural non urban area...give the students a spatial limit of 20x20 or something....ask each to design seething that interacts with some natural phenomenon.  Sun angles, rain, a certain species, etc.   Research site and nature, design something around the given constraints to produce something of beauty and or utility.  

tammuz, those are very creative teaching methods. I like them and I can elaborate on them. They mostly fall into line of thinking I want to put in front of the students to approach form with the set of conceptual perception and construction. A bit further and generative places that will also help them to decode and measure the built environments of architecture.

jla-x, they will be doing that next semester. But I want to feed some of that information, however I would try that inside the confinements of urban environment before they go to Joshua Tree.

This cube thing as the generator has to slowly retire even though it helps students to build up discipline for making things. Same goes with the over saturated curves etc. 

Where do you start learning /teaching architecture? Can we create and experiment  with the subject first?

I agree with Orhan that --for a truly "101" experience-- the task at hand is form and space.  Context and site, ultimately of great importance, complicates things too much for someone just trying to get a handle on the very basics.

Have fun teaching!

Thanks citizen. I taught 101 for 4-5 years with a given syllabus and target deliverables, now I have a little wiggle room to experiment few ideas, even then, without bypassing Dept.,SLOs, NAAB, Admin.. Academics etc.. 

I know about the entry level know nothing :) students. They are going to go through that strange universe anyway.  A lot of them never leave the 101 form making methodology even in fifth year. I think it is a matter of which process to apply and hope for the best outcome. Damn thing is everything is data driven even architecture and teaching. I have to find ways to threaten it. Otherwise it is all the same conversation and outcome and I am not sure that serves to current conditions effectively.

Orhan : Where do you start learning /teaching architecture? Can we create and experiment  with the subject first? 

In what way, for instance (creating and experimenting with the subject)?

With reference to the first question, i remember that i had more difficulty with the physical conventions of architecture and thereafter their representation than with the other more abstract requisites. There was a clear duality that found me a schizo-paralytic  trapped in the dark catatonic chasm between the right and left halves of my brain. Brain hanger. I guess it was at that time that i sensed the malaise of being lost in a field that could be both at one time, very interesting and boring and tedious. I had by then nearly resigned myself to living a longer life than i had deemed necessary. The pangd of adulthood...when you consciously and acutely are aware that you've been cursed with more time to spend in being you, whatever that is.

I've found architecture could be very interesting based on my own conceptualizations of the architectural projects during the schooling. Maybe that was because of my mentor who is a well known conceptual artist who happened to teach at Sci Arc for few years. I really had an art and critical architecture education more so than normal architecture. I produced interesting and provocative ideas but mediocre drawings and models. I've also found at my first paying job that it was the most boring profession one could lie himself that wasn't true. All of a sudden all you learned and did in architecture school were no interest to people in the office and they had no interest in even listening anything other than working for their family which they started way too early. It took a lot of self conviction and persistence to stay alive in architecture I finally feel I am getting somewhere with it.

Having that kind of experience, I could sympathise with less x-acto knife and cardboard and more content. Cardboard boxes are nice but they are very limited?

this project we had students do reminds me a little where I grew up. Now, should I have them create a superficial city with few different forms? One from memory, one from a case study and one from speculation? Maybe I need to contradict myself..