Katie MacDonald, AIA & Kyle Schumann
Co-founders, After Architecture
Decanting the Log
Today, the Biomaterial Turn foregrounds changing ecological and material ethics that necessitate alternative approaches to working with grown matter. By reconsidering our relationship to craft, construction practices, and fabrication technologies, architects and builders can leverage the embodied intelligence and grown form of natural materials – a shift in approach from specifying to strategizing.
Maturing digital tools allow for a reimagining of traditional constraints on material economies and labor. In their practice, After Architecture, and research lab, Before Building, Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann deploy both analog tools and emerging technologies to collaborate with natural materials. They seek to make computational construction techniques low cost and accessible, using consumer grade technologies and inventing their own low-cost ground-up systems. Their work proposes an expanded approach in which architects conceptualize and execute not just single projects, but the systems, methods, and technologies that enable their production - a shift in the respective agencies of architect, builder, and factory.
