This line of inquiry is ultimately an opening foray, a project still gnarling its way toward more rigorous material testing and less constrained forms of collaboration. The work is intentionally provisional. Wheatgrass is an intensely domesticated species, grown here under controlled conditions that are far from wild. We imagine future investigations might introduce a shift to native cultivars, an increase in depth and scale and potentially a move to in the ground outside, beyond the stable environment of the laboratory. The goal of this work is not refinement, but conversation. Grass remains a variably unpredictable collaborator, and the research advances by following where that collaboration resists, surprises, or fails. We offer Root Logics as a modest proposition: architectural materials need not be obedient to be useful. Working with living media requires patience, a tolerance for delay and an acceptance of failure as information rather than error. In trading authorship for attentiveness, we move away from the carpenter’s precision toward something closer to the gardener’s dexterity. At a moment when architecture is increasingly preoccupied with control — of carbon, performance and outcomes — there may be value in materials that insist on finding their own way through the work. *
CHAD CONNERY is an Assistant Professor at University of Calgary and co-founder of MOTE Projects. SALINA TRAN is an undergraduate researcher in the Bachelor of Design in City Innovation program at University of Calgary.
Connery + Tran
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on site review 48 :: building materials
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