“Mat-building can be said to epitomize the anonymous collective” - Alison Smithson
This studio will explore the potential of mat-building, a 50-year-old architectural strategy, to stage con- temporary forms of social collectivity and shared work, knowledge, and experience. Alison Smithson’s 1974 essay “How to Recognize and Read Mat-Building” proposes the dense medina urbanism of cities in Northern Africa as a model for still-recovering centers of post-war European cities. It departs from the monolithic vision of ‘the masses’ and abstract functionalism of modernist planning, focusing instead on individual freedom and ‘close-knit patterns of association’. Reading it today, a con- temporary vision of collective space emerges; one that acknowledges the diversity of individual sub- jects while organizing and focusing shared activity and purpose.
Smithson’s idea has sustained 50 years of architectural interest and a series of built examples that ex- tend from late modernism through the “field conditions” of the turn of the century to contemporary practices such as SANAA, Herzog & deMeruon, and Neri & Hu. In our current social and political con- text, mat buildings offer an alternative mode of inclusion and collective agency: Smithson’s “anony- mous collective” is generated through organizational cohesiveness and interconnection rather than ar- chitectural identity.
Despite the resonance of mat-building today, we inhabit a vastly different social world, global environ- ment, and urban landscape than Smithson did. Students will therefore be asked to reconceive several fundamental aspects of mat-building:
The late modern period saw western societies and cities spread out to accommodate mass-con- sumer culture and transportation technology. Proliferating automobiles, household appliances, radios, and televisions all enabled or demanded physical separation and geographic dispersal. This sprawl typically rendered sites as ‘empty’ and infinitely available. In contrast, this studio will practice a more contingent repurposing of the urban landscape, treating buildings and ma- terials on site ‘as found’, with the potential to be partially maintained, reused, and repurposed.
Most early mat buildings are primarily concrete, a material whose environmental costs were not widely apparent at the time. Now, the repercussions of modern materials are clear. Stu- dents will research and explore the potential of biogenic materials as structural and insulating alternatives to concrete. Beyond their technical performance, masonry, stone, earth, mass tim- ber, straw, hemp, and cork may also change how we think about architectural mass. In pursuit of efficiency, contemporary construction typically minimizes or eliminates poché, but given their frequently low cost, light weight, availability, and carbon sequestration, biogenic materials enable alternate tectonic strategies and novel types of stereotomic space-making.
The architects of Team 10, including Smithson, were immersed in a culture of ‘systems think- ing’. Despite their aversion to hierarchy and composition, they believed that imposed formal order was needed to give structure to collective activity. This took the form of repetition and modularity both spatially and tectonically. Many of the more recent buildings that might qualify as Mats privilege apparent randomness and informality. We will explore this shift and weigh whether systematic order or informality better enables buildings to sponsor social collectives today.