Matthew Hunt
Material Resistance
Material, Specification, Terrestrial Architecture
“Each Material has its specific characteristics in which we must understand it if we want to use it. In other words, no design is possible until the materials with which you design are completely understood." – MVDRV
Conversations about the application and assembly of material have long been central to the discipline of architecture. While many architects espouse a reverence for the material characteristics of buildings, this reverence is too often limited to a material’s visual and textural qualities, skirting issues of where these resources come from, how their extraction effects their adjacent ecosystems, and the nature of their lifespan. Today, we specify architectural products, not materials. With the advent of BIM software that tends to bury the contextual knowledge of what goes into these products in an onslaught of production data, we grow further every day from a true understanding of raw material.
A glance at a typical wall section reveals much about the current state of specification. Primarily made of plastics, the insulation and waterproofing layers we’re so quick to conceal play a major part in the impact of the construction industry. But while the plastics in our walls are mostly hidden, the effect of our reliance on them grows more obvious every day. The world we live from and the world we live in are colliding. The impact of global warming is something we can no longer insulate ourselves from. For this reason, architecture can no longer see itself as autonomous: it is either complicit or revolutionary.
My thesis is about reframing how we see raw materials in architecture. It asks us to step back from specifying products to understand where materials come from and what their impact is on their environmental and social ecosystems. In this way specification can be seen as the primary point for activism in architecture. Renewable alternatives to traditional insulation systems are available, but need to be specified/celebrated to make any real impact. Hempcrete, a carbon negative, renewable material made of hemp hurd and lime mortar, is a viable alternative with an array of performative values.
To shift to the use of these new materials requires understanding a material from its global impact to its minutest detail. Celebrating a material in its raw form, appreciating accident and letting the material be itself is my way of developing a rough poetry.
I’m working to understand hempcrete in 3 ways: sourcing the raw material, specifying it for building, and understanding the materials distinct behavior. By modeling at 3 scales (mass, wall, 1:1), I hope to build a conceptual and material framework to celebrate this resource. These early experiments begin to reveal answers to questions of density, texture, color, molding, and post-processing. Through these conceptual models, I hope to begin to learn the grammar and vocabulary for the poetry I think the material can achieve.
The building project, a winery in Jouillac, France, will challenge our notion of the monolith. Materializing a building out of hempcrete ( a non-structural wall system) rather than stone or concrete opens conversations about Kahn’s “hollow stones”, where allowances can be made for the slippage between mass and surface
Worms Eye Chunk
First Floor Plan
Hempcrete Model 01
Hempcrete Model 02
Hempcrete Model 03