Refined

Through a collaborative project between MA Architecture and MA Biodesign, students were challenged to interrogate a waste stream of our choice through critical making. My team’s project statement follows:

The western gaze too often casts smooth whiteness as a fundamental state, a stripping back to pure unmarkedness, failing to recognise the invisible labour of maintenance and reapplication required to perpetuate white illusions. Our team looked to sand paper—a ubiquitous waste stream and tool of surface refinement—as a lens to critique these standards and to trace how raw materials move through the world. We explored methods of processing waste sand paper to enhance its biocompatibility and leverage its inherent strength through emergent artifacts representing alternative approaches to elevating, remediating, and reintegrating the waste of refinement, assisted by more-than-human collaborators. By speculatively positioning dirty, messy, growing, changing matter out of place in modern, compliant interior environments, we seek to surface new connections between living and nonliving matter, expanding the biotic tactility permitted in designed spaces.

MY ROLE

Waste Team Lead

Collecting Sandpaper

Creating Material Recipe

Sample Fabrication

Final Fabrication

Infographics

Presentation Design

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TEAM

Jin Ho Park — MArch

Rong Hu — M Arch

Nira Hussain — MArch

Emma Howard — MArch

Eirian Zhang — MABD

Shailaja Maheetharan — MArch

Zoe Restrick — M Arch

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PROJECT DURATION

Feb - March 2025

7 weeks