Material Memory
Senses can trigger our memory, but can memory trigger our senses? My grandfather used to tell us stories of the war and his march from Omaha Beach to Berlin. With […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Great Metal Tube in the Sky
Composite Bird My window seat next to the wing of the Boeing 777 that would carry me across the Arctic Sea to China was anything but desired. As soon as […]
ePTFE (like the other two, but not exactly)
While PTFE and ETFE have made significant contributions to architecture, the range of architectural types they have affected is rather limited. They have been applied exclusively to tensile and pneumatic […]
ETFE (Teflon’s handsome brother)
While PTFE (Teflon) can certainly be considered a bit of a miracle material, and has certainly had a significant impact on our lives in it’s own special non-stick way, architecturally […]
GREEN CAST [vertical green: aesthetic + function exposed]
Project: Green Cast, Odaware-shi, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan Architect/Designer: Kengo Kuma and Associates Sources: http://kkaa.co.jp/ Featured material: Aluminum die cast panels and plant material. This vertical green facade by KK+A leaves […]
PTFE. (arch nemesis of duct tape)
And now the moment you’ve been waiting for. A three part series on variations of tetra-fluorocarbons in architecture. Get some popcorn and pull up a chair, you’re in for a […]
Placing Prefab
The Loblolly House by Kierantimberlake provocatively rethinks the pre-fabricated home in a way that attempts to reconcile the mass-customization capabilities of 21st century fabrication with more elemental aspects of place. […]
As long as I’m on a roll, let’s talk more about tires
So in the last post we just rolled over a few of the lighter applications of tires in architecture, mostly because true sustainability is terrifying and you’re not ready for […]
The Fascination with Corrugation
Cardboard is perhaps the most vernacular engineered material today. Almost everyone has had interaction with cardboard and most have experimented in their own construction using cardboard. Remember that toy you […]
Lost in Paris
The clients who came to the architecture firm R & Sie had one request: they wanted a house designed that would allow them to look out, but not allow people […]
material as more than architecture
Several days ago, I stumbled across a manifesto by Bruce Mau – no, not the “Incomplete Manifesto” but rather, one written for Icon Magazine1 in 2007. In it, Mau makes […]
Breaking out of the mold
If you has to sum up the world around us in four letters what would you say? Any guesses? …. CMYK Things we design, print and make are always in […]
Tis the Season
Tis the Season: The season of gift giving is upon us. We will be bombarded with packaging, wrapping paper, and tape. Most of that paper will be put in a […]
Hearing Space
The sense of hearing is highly important to the way that we experience and perceive the spaces around us. Though we are not as reliant upon our sense of hearing […]
Better than bamboo: Tires
With the planet’s impending doom slowly approaching, the trendy appeal of sustainability has become irresistible. Which is great, because “sustainable” means “able to be sustained”, and most people would agree that’s […]
Material Strategies 
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