Lessons from the Woodshop: Cultivating Design with Living Materials
summary
Eighteen months of ethnography documents building three timber-frame tiny houses, using hundreds of photos, interviews (about 10 hours with eight core informants) and hands-on joinery to show how living materials behave and can be designed with. Techniques like the scarf joint and tossed tenon both extend short timber into long members and self-tighten under gravity; aesthetics like announcing the joint make scarcity legible; reading legible textures guides repair, durability, and stewardship decisions.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction to research
- 3:34Living materials in design
- 6:27Legible textures in wood
- 8:14Vital decay and durability
- 11:05Resource scarcity and stewardship
- 13:58Prototyping material relationships
- 15:22Methodological reorientation
- 16:25Q&A session
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