This series of prototypes deals with the status of the joint in composite construction. The history of the joint is one of beginnings and ends of materials, thermal or expansions breaks, and any number of assembly details connecting one material to another. Polymer-based composites offer new ways into this problem. In fact, they enable for the first time the possibility of near seamlessness. Nevertheless, such removal of all tectonic expression and cultural signs from surfaces is unsettlingly near to Modernism, where ornament, detail, and all forms of rustication were excluded as a sign of resistance to the past. The revolution of composite construction must be based a different ethos. Rather than erasing tectonic articulation because we can, it is time for architects to begin to theorize what constitutes a composite tectonics. 

Our approach in these these prototypes was to consider ways of joining that come from older traditions of Japanese wood joinery and near-figural seaming from traditional textile stitching. Japanese joinery is based on friction-fit connections which are not assembled with hardware but rather through the complex figuration of the edge or end of a piece of material. The imperative there, as in these prototypes, is to eliminate mineral materiality (nails) while still creating structural continuity. In stitch work, while the goal is to join two pieces of fabric together functionally, just as important is the figuration of the seam itself, where it can become a zone of mystery and surprise.

Composite construction, which is based on surface-structure, lends itself to puzzle-piecing, snapping, and healing together of swaths or super-component chunks. Critical for us was to maximize surface continuity and surface area for gluing, and yet still create overall heterogeneity. Because of the lightweight construction of each super-component, it is conceivable that they be flown short distances to a construction site by helicopter, or sliced into truckable strips to be glued on ground scaffolding before they are lifted.