RAZOR THIN

This Applied Studies Elective seminar will investigate the role of veneers and laminates in contemporary architecture and material production. Whether made of a real material, like hardwood or stone, or a printed surface made to look and textured like the real, veneers and laminates are thin layers bonded with adhesives, heat and pressure to a cheaper surface or Substrate hidden below. The applications of this inexpensive, ready-made product spans furniture and cabinetry to industrial design and architecture. Its wide range availability and breath of applications reflects the state of contemporary industrial material production and its propensity towards the lamination of surfaces: the process of manufacturing a material in multiple thin layers, so that the composite material achieves improved strength, stability, sound insulation, weather proofing, appearance, or other properties from the use of different materials.

Veneers, Laminates, and the Surfacing of Architecture

This is flatness pressed into Service -performative, decorative, or both.

Industrially produced and faux in appearance, Veneers and laminates are scorned by craftsmen for its superficiality and vulgar cheapness, yet it is precisely these qualities that best capture the contemporary moment’: Surfaces that work to elevate but also to hide; surfaces that signify while also actively surfaces.

Left side image : Seaming ang grain direction collage

Right top & bottom: 2D details drawings showing the “turning moments” of Tomba Brion

The different laminates used in our model are articulated to simulate the cast of shadows and alter projections, connecting different surfaces and three dimensional planes using materials instead of edges.

The project is the instantiation of an on-going research project around the relationship between architectural instruments and architectural production.

The research explores how seaming and grain direction becomes a “turning moments” of design within the discursive spaces of descriptive geometry, digital tooling, material fabrication and construction.

Geometric primitives are the basic shapes we all know and recognize. They are simple three-dimensional forms such as cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. One of the fundamental powers of the primitive is the way our brain instantly recognizes its geometric character, even when the form is not perfectly defined. Over the past few years, I have been very interested in this threshold of recognizability and how that might allow for some looseness in its part to whole relationship.

I started from designing an “imperfect” geometric primitive, a cube, made from interlocking parts. I focused on a primary operation of assembly with a secondary operation for connection, then explore the range of formal, spatial, and material possibilities that this might enable.

In this first exercise, we did iterative studies on Midjourney to explore different formal potentials in the construction of our geometric primitive.