Learning by Making: Why Hands Still Matter

At a time when creativity is often reduced to our screens, the Werkbund Werkstatt in Nürnberg offers something increasingly rare: time, material resistance, and the freedom to discover through making. For more than 40 years, it has been a place where young people step outside conventional education paths to learn by doing, together. Norbert Zlöbl, Managing Director and Headmaster, reflects on why hands-on practice, shared processes, and structured play are more relevant than ever.

For readers who may not know the Werkbund Werkstatt Nürnberg: what is it, and why does it exist?

Norbert Zlöbl: The Werkbund Werkstatt Nürnberg was founded over 40 years ago, following a discussion about what was called “the human without hands.” Even back then, there was concern that increasing specialization, automation, and computer-based work were causing people to lose essential practical and sensory experiences. The idea was to create a place where young people, before choosing a profession or degree, could work with real materials and discover their own abilities through practice.

What does that look like in everyday terms?

Zlöbl: Participants spend a full year with us, working in material workshops: wood, metal, glass, and textiles. The are supported by professional designers, craftspeople, and artists, and the assignments are deliberately abstract. There is no predefined outcome, no product brief, no “right” solution. That openness is crucial, because it allows people to discover what materials can do, and what they themselves can do, without immediately being pushed into utility or performance.

This openness sounds very close to the mcbw theme, Playground of Possibilities.

Zlöbl: Yes, but it’s important to say: a playground doesn’t mean chaos. Play needs structure. Materials themselves create discipline. Glass demands focus and precision, metal resistance and patience, textiles openness and experimentation. Discipline does not arise from purely heteronomous rules like in school, but rather from the ability to immerse oneself in the design process and be guided by it. People show up, concentrate, and persevere because the work matters to them.

How do ideas emerge in this process?

Zlöbl: Often not the way people expect. Many arrive with vague ideas or fixed images of what they want to do. But in practice, ideas emerge through interaction with the material. You discover something by accident, you notice a tension, a form, a mistake, and suddenly there is potential. It’s a dialectical process: material influences thought and thought responds to material. The idea doesn’t exist first and get executed later. It develops through making.

What role does reflection play?

Zlöbl: A very important one. After each workshop phase, participants present their work to the group. They talk about what worked, what didn’t, where they struggled, where decisions were difficult. This verbal reflection helps them understand their own process — and learn from others. It’s social learning, not competition.

How does this approach relate to digital tools, AI, and screen-based design?

Zlöbl: Digital tools are important, but they are tools, not foundations. Without material and aesthetic experience, design go off to miss reality. A computer cannot replace the experience of how light manifests itself in glass or what properties lie dormant in the material wood. Many participants tell us they are grateful to be “digitally offline” for a while. It sharpens perception and changes how they think. Later, when they work digitally, they do so with a deeper understanding of material reality.

Beyond skills and orientation, what do participants take with them?

Zlöbl: A sense of agency. They experience that the world has resistance, and that they can respond to it. They also experience working together without constant comparison or pressure. In a system that often promotes competition, this is a different concept of learning and collaboration.

If you had to sum up one message for mcbw visitors?

Zlöbl: Trust the process. Accept uncertainty. Make things. Through practical and reflective action, you not only shape materials; they also shape your understanding of yourself and the world.