2020 Edition

This PhD project relies on a practice-based and design-led methodology informed by the textile and material design background of its main investi- gator as well as the past, current and future projects of the architectural agency scau, in which this research is primarily developed and rooted.

Central to this approach is the collection of site-specific deconstruction materials (blocks, fragments, gravel, sand, dust etc) that are subsequently sorted and transformed to become part of a new architectural cycle on the same place. Pointing at this furtive moment where the status of building materials is being transformed, this project explores how to give to these deposits in-becoming a second life by investigating site – specific loops of remanence able to nurture the conception, building and experience of a new edifice or its rehabilitation.
Once collected and selected, several transformation protocols at the cross of craftsmanship and industrial knowledge are developed to transform rubble into a new architectural materiality. This process is adjusted for each project, leading to specific materials primarily manufactured from the hyper-local resources of the deconstruction site. As such, the demolished building physically informs the conception and materialization of a new edifice under the forms of fillers, aggregates or pigments that will determine part or totality of the new material and therefore built environment’s colour, matter, the texture, weight etc. In this way, the trans-materialized memory of the building becomes one of its constitutive components.