The Outlaw Builder Studios

For counterculture designers, crafting objects by hand from scavenged materials provided an alternative to postwar consumer excess, cultivated cognitive skills, and built new social relationships. Experiments in pedagogy conducted by Sim Van der Ryn and Jim Campe of UC Berkeley's Department of architecture between 1969 and 1972 tested the potential of "outlaw building" as a vehicle for self discovery among students ranging from grade-school children to college-age adults.