This project, completed as a Visiting Researcher at the University of Edinburgh 2024-2025, is a series of material studies that sit somewhere between architectural fragments and sculptural objects. Without scale, spatial purpose, or weathering responsibilities, the objects focus attention instead on ‘what if?’ regenerative material combinatorial possibilities.
Each material system has a corresponding ‘recipe’- a mix based on established specifications for mass, light, framed, or rammed earth / hempcrete + wood and thatch (from a deconstructed broom). The work is driven by a question: what would a regenerative material tectonic look like (and how would it perform?).
From left to right, the assemblies are:
1: mass earth (clay-rich soil + straw) + pine + broom corn thatch
2: ‘engineered’ soil: sand/silt/gravel + clay and soldered steel just because.
3: ‘engineered’ soil + hempcrete in pine frame.
4: light earth / mass earth (based on the University of Plymouth’s cobBauge project)