Re-Ordering architecture:
An Exhibition of Making Machine and Material Kin


Shelby Doyle, Frank Melendez and Nancy Diniz, Kelley Van Dyck Murphy, and Jonathan A. Scelsa with Greg Sheward

Usagi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
NYC DESIGN Week 2023

rE-ordering architecture, four researchers establish new column styles with 3D-printed clay
By Davis Richardson for Architect’s Newspaper May 24, 2023


What does it mean to design entwined architecture?

An order in architecture is defined by a specific assemblage of parts subject to uniform established proportions and characteristics and is most readily identifiable by its metonymic column. Each column in this exhibition showcases a new “order”- a seed or fragment of an entwined future. These propositions offer neither apocalypse nor salvation. Rather this work grapples with questions of how architecture might measure, report, or act to produce entwinement between architecture and environment.

These four columns are fabricated by 3D printing clay, a process which requires reconsidering anthropocentric notions of authorship, precision, and control. Robotic processes on the one hand require a level of precision via computational command, but also an attentiveness to how the manual and synthetic hands interact and the feedback of the material in use. Clay is an ancient, visceral material that loops, slumps, and oozes - its live nature allows for manipulation in tandem with digital composition.  This process  establishes an odd kinship between the designer, tool, and material. The resulting projects explore rE-ordering architecture through making machine and material kin.

Riparian Flux proposes an architectural order where space is entwined with the ebb and flow of water, rather than a tool of control. In plan, the column is organized radially to create a single line that increases in curve amplitude from 0 to 12 rotations to support the column. In elevation the column measures 24 hours of printing and each slice serves as a method for measuring abundance, security, and hunger borrowing from the historic Nilometer.

Under Construction