On Materiality Tim Ingold: “To understand materiality, it seems, we need to get as far away from materials as possible. For me, the problem came to a head when, in November 2002, I attended a session at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association which were held in that year in the city of New Orleans. The session was entitled ‘Materiality’, and included presentations on such topics as ‘Immateriality’, ‘For a materialist semiotics’, ‘Materiality and cognition’, and ‘Praxeology in a material world’. These presentations were overflowing with references to the works of currently fashionable social and cultural theorists, and expounded in a language of grotesque impenetrability on the relations between materiality and a host of other, similarly unfathomable qualities, including agency, intentionality, functionality, sociality, spatiality, semiosis, spirituality and embodiment. Not one of the presenters, however, was able to say what materiality actually means, nor did any of them even mention materials or their properties. For the most part, I have to confess, I could make neither head nor tail of what they were talking about. As anthropologists, I thought to myself, might we not learn more about the material composition of the inhabited world by engaging quite directly with the stuff we want to understand? What academic perversion leads us to speak not of materials and their properties but of the materiality of objects? It seemed to me that the concept of materiality, whatever it might mean, has become a real obstacle to sensible enquiry into materials, their transformations and affordances.” Me: I try and forbid my students using the word ‘materiality’ . It doesn’t, for me, suggest any observation around that has any substance: more, it implies an entirely superficial reading of material - as a paper thin aesthetic immaterial veneer plastered onto a substrate of nothingness. Anyway, here are two buildings of ours with material qualities, and no materiality. Both with materials that have emerged from the circumstances of their production - with, in the second image - no ‘finishing’, no sanitising and no curation.

Sketch model testing for a new educational productive growing facility #WIP

Hold the date: Studio in the Woods is confirmed for 2026, in perhaps the best and most appropriate location yet. More details soon.

One way. And the other. Hemp, Larch, Waxed Mild Steel, Shuttering Ply, Fibre Cement.

I’d never read Raumlabor’s Acting in public when we designed East Quay - and that is to rereading @jeremytill @tat_schneider and Nishat Awan‘s Spatial Agency I just have. A quote: “The utopian spirit of bricolage that characterises all of these projects demonstrates a new understanding of what architecture can be. Instead of being static, everlasting, inflexible and expensive, it can be removable, mobile, a stage for all kinds of scenarios. The members of raumlabor carry out fundamental political research and deconstruct the systems that define building and urbanity. Who decides how public space should be structured and built, using what materials and in what shapes? In whose interest is it that public space looks the way it looks? How can these systems be softened up or bypassed? What could a new approach to urbanity be? We want to produce space independently of conventional, fragmented planning and build- ing procedures. We want to experiment: we love bricolage,6 material experiment, finding new structures, 1:1 trial and error, thinking while building, adjusting, testing, improving, converting, recycling, inflating. We prefer the unfinished, the extendable, the vulnerable, to large-scale architecture. We have been using the term experimental building in our work for some time now. Such projects counterbalance the overwhelming masses of millions of tonnes of incredibly boring, tasteless and conventional steel, glass and sandstone concoctions with a new attitude towards the city. They set an ephemeral, soft, playful, flexible, mutant, eventful idea of space against an existing social and spatial ueber-determinacy.”

In / Out (Hemp, Larch, Fibre Cement)

Really pleased @eastquaywatchet is included in the Democratic Design exhibition in Berlin @aedesberlin that opens on December 12 with a keynote by Richard Sennett. In Democratic Design – Space for Cooperation, Collaboration and Compromise, Aedes explores how architecture, planning processes and public spaces can foster democratic engagement and social cohesion – both more urgent than ever in times of profound societal uncertainty. The programme consists of an exhibition, a series of four Lab Talks and a catalogue featuring contributions from practitioners in Berlin, Germany and across Europe, selected through an open call in collaboration with European architecture centres and through research conducted by the Aedes team. At the core of Democratic Design are democratic planning processes and the spaces they create. The presented projects amplify marginalised voices, encourage participation and inspire collective visions for the future. Dialogue and exchange are essential conditions for democracy, cultivating the ability to accept differing viewpoints and to compromise – the very foundations of democratic culture. This conviction underpins Democratic Design – Space for Cooperation, Collaboration and Compromise, curated by the Aedes team and presented at Aedes in Berlin. Democracy requires tools that spark interest, inspire involvement and enable participation. Architecture and urban planning hold significant potential as drivers of fairer and broader inclusion – particularly for those whose voices remain unheard in political discourse and the shaping of public space. They also open pathways into crucial debates about democracy and the future of our shared living environment. Democratic Design presents exemplary democratic planning processes that make these principles tangible.

Super interesting to be back at Hooke Park today for the Future Forest Symposium. I haven’t been to Hooke for a few years, and have written about some of the projects I was involved with in the book – notably the Caretaker’s House, but also this – the Big Shed/Assembly Workshop – which was the first to come out of the newly established Design & Make programme – the building was designed up to planning by the AA Design & Make / Diploma Students, and then taken on by my office to develop for construction – which my friend Charley Brentnall led. In my PhD I was critical of the building in terms of its process – why were we so conventional…? Ie – the process of development was a conventional one, and the contractual relationship equivalently so, and I’m not convinced we really designed through making, and there is still too much steel in it (when compared with ABK/Frei Otto’s workshop adjacent) and it was crazily expensive compared to a shed . The Assembly Workshop used thinnings screwed together with a large ‘Heco’ screw (adapted from conventional housebuilding technology minimising the use of more conventional steel plates) meaning students with limited construction experience could work on the project. The complex geometry is partly the product of a self-conscious design agenda, but suits the use of small sections built up into large trusses, and sets out a manifesto for making experimental design-led buildings using hyper local materials, which included not just the trusses but also the cladding which was grown and milled on site. The problem of upscaling or wider applicability remains – which is that a steel portal framed shed would been ¼ of the cost. However – I still love the Big Shed, and it was such a formative time to be working at Hooke. Read the chapter in the book for more details and also about other projects there…