I'm going into my final year of Architecture this year and I'm tossing some ideas around as to what I want to do.

I'm really fascinated by the ingenuity real people (not architects) display in building/modifying their homes. The funkier/more fashionable end of this obsession is Watts Towers and buildings like this (http://www.kevinfreitas.net/journal/20051229/) , while the more down to earth end is DIY hobbyists and people building their own shacks.

Linked to that is the idea of architecture as a receptacle- the idea that architecture has relevance and meaning ONLY in as much as it allows for life to happen.

No strong feelings about a site, a programme or an aesthetic, just this idea that we can learn so much from vernacular architectures (including industrial, modern and "invisible" vernaculars) and a nagging suspicion that architecture might not matter as muc has the things that it allows to happen matter...

any thoughts, references, warnings, gentle pointing out of errors of my ways?

Architecture of the Everyday (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568981147/104-1676091-1387128?v=glance&n=283155)

well my friend . . . .

u have to read books from jeremy till. he is a professor architecture from sheffield university and already wrote books about everyday and participation.
u should read it i think .

Both useful, thanks.

Can anyone point me at built works that are worth looking at?

Try this link (http://homeusers.brutele.be/kroll/)
The architect Lucien Kroll is well known to be anticonformist.
His work includes people's management of architecture. His site is in English, but if you google some interesting stuff can be found in english.

Gaston Bachelard - The Poetics of Space (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0807064734/ref=sib_rdr_ex/104-9082378-7072761?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S009&j=0#reader-page)

Exploration of mans tie to the place where he dwells. Great book.