From glass fiber reinforced concrete to upcycled waste foam, the building blocks of the future are being developed in the research labs of today and a current exhibit at the California College of Arts in San Francisco is putting some of these new methods and techniques on display. Curated by Jonathan Massey—the new Dean of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning—and designed by Clark Thenhaus of Endemic, Designing Material Innovation features five full-scale prototypes that conjoin form and material in fresh ways. 

Located on the school's Back Lot, the five pieces "explore the functional and experiential dimensions of architecture generated at the intersection of formal and material research." All products of experimentation in and around North American architecture schools, the prototypes exemplify great technical capacities in concrete and composites. In showing advanced design and fabrication techniques, they demonstrate how "architectural research addresses big questions about our past, present, and possible futures." 

The exhibit opened on September 28th and will carry on through December 22nd. A symposium will be held beginning this Thursday, the 26th, with a Keynote Lecture by Philippe Block of Block Research Group and presentations and panels to follow on Friday, the 27th. For more information, visit here and read on to further learn about the projects featured in Designing Material Innovation!

The school's Digital Craft Lab has two projects in the exhibition. One, the Polymorph Pavilion, is a six-legged shell made from blocks of EPS foam pinned and glued together, then coated with polyurea in a strong, high-gloss red and the other, a floating breakwater structure made from an innovative, ecologically optimized fiber-reinforced polymer composite substrate. Creating a new kind of resilient coastal infrastructure, the Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab builds upon three years of applied research done in collaboration with Kreysler & Associates and the Benthic Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Recently announced as a part of Public Sediment, one of ten teams selected for the Resilient By Design Bay Area Challenge, the Buoyant Ecologies team have designed variable topographies that perform above and below water, providing habitats for marine species and promoting ecological diversity. 

Also participating in the exhibit is T+E+A+M, the Ann Arbor-based studio comprised of four professors based out of the Taubman College. The team has put forth a series of free-standing columns made of reclaimed construction waste and industrial byproduct. Named "post rock," the hybrid material is made of waste polymers and inorganic aggregates developed within an architectural research initiative led by principals Thom Moran and Meredith Miller. The material is the firm's recreation of an emerging geological material called plastiglomerate, from which Clastic Order is the first full-scale installation. 

Across the lot, sits the appropriately named "McKnelly Megalith," a 2000-pound, sixteen-foot-long object made of glass fiber reinforced concrete. The project is the result of an experiment led by Brandon Clifford of Matter Design and historian Mark Jarzombek, who we inspired by the tremendous knowledge megalithic civilizations held in moving heavy objects. In particular, the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island, according to Dutch colonizers, had described that their Moai statues weighing up to 82 tons apiece were moved by walking themselves. Deploying digital modeling and fabrication to test this historical hypothesis, Clifford tasked students at MIT with designing, computing, and constructing a GFRC megalith that can be walked horizontally and stood vertically with little effort. 

Similarly experimenting with concrete, "Thinness" by APTUM Architecture, is composed of sixteen modules conjoined to form a cross-vaulted pavilion. Working with CEMEX, one of the world’s largest concrete and cement companies, the firm tested new fiber reinforcement methods that allow for extremely thin casts. After settling on a design that perforates the shell more extensively in areas of higher stress, the prototype was constructed through a method that combined contemporary water-jet-cut silicone with the ancient method of lost wax casting, in which wax formwork is melted and reused after each pour. Half an inch thick, the hollow shell shows how high-performance lightweight concrete "opens new performative and visual possibilities."

All of this is pulled together with installation design provided by Clark Thenhaus, who created a “Confetti Urbanism” that reimagines the CCA Back Lot. With painted discs, ribbons, bands, and shapes, eye-popping "confetti" frames the five exhibited projects while cueing visitors to move, stand, and look in particular ways. Reimagining the lot as a lively layering of architecture, furniture, plantings, and human activity, the exhibition itself is a prototype of sorts. According to Massey it is the first large-scale exhibition mounted on CCA’s Back Lot and "tests the potential for distinctive forms of living and learning, making and displaying art and design, in the outdoor venues that the college plans to build over the next few years."