The Form of Mud
The Form of Mud is a research studio on contemporary earth construction technology. The Form of Mud produced housing proposals for a post-Harvey Houston. The Form of Mud took a research trip to Switzerland and Austria and hosted a symposium at Rice University. The Form of Mud will eventually become a publication.
A first assumption underlying this course is that, in its embodiment as construction, architecture plays a major role in material culture. A second assumption is that architects, especially today, tend to focus on other aspects such as form or program and disregard the wild potential that materials hold for defining the discourse of a project. The third assumption is that construction materials are neither the intellectual property of phenomenologists, nor a repository of disciplinary and technical traditions to be preserved: we should not take materials as a given, they can be approached in a subversive and progressive manner; they can produce new knowledge and new architecture.