Constructing agency 2016-2018

Material Networks

Studio Shajay Bhooshan

Tutors Alicia Nahmad Vasquez

Team Suchart Ouypornchaisakul (Thailand), Jeffrey Widjaja (Indonesia), Taole Chen (Austria)

Material Networks proposes a negotiated communal housing system that provides
custom-tailored homes to cohesive communities based on their existing social network.
Additive manufacturing in clay-like materials using industrial robots is investigated as a
fabrication technology that can deliver mass-customized, integrated dwellings, and that
minimizes the stratification between end-user and design process, thus returning agency to the people who will ultimately inhabit the spaces.
At the base of the research lies the hypothesis that human settlement patterns need to
become intimate reflections of their social structure in order to form strong, sustainable
communities. Historically, humans have lived in cohesive communities where they dwell and work together, supporting each other. This is reflected in the architecture which takes specific forms based on the characteristics, location and culture of the inhabitants. However, the standardized, generic box designed for the lowest common denominator has become the de facto architectural dogma in the last century as a consequence of the proliferation of mass-production technologies. Combined with modernist zoning beliefs, contemporary buildings are typically conceived as aggregators for a random pool of unrelated individuals. Author Francis Holiss outlines an overlooked building typology in her book Beyond Live/Work (2015) which she calls “workhome”. The workhome is found in a variety of vernacular forms throughout the world such as the English topshop or the Japanese machiya. It provides a starting point for developing a contemporary vernacular based on digital fabrication technologies and algorithmic processes in which social parameters, physical constraints and geometric possibilities come together.