Teodoro Rava makes ‘Hyper Wood’ using synthetic and natural materials in order to imitate wood

Crunch: inside the first Architecture Window display

By Will Jennings

Published on 14 February 2024

Will Jennings meets architecture graduates in the RA’s display ‘Crunch’ who are repurposing and reimagining building materials.

From the Spring 2024 issue of RA Magazine, issued quarterly to Friends of the RA.

This spring, when walking between the Academy’s two buildings, visitors will encounter the Architecture Window, a new modular display structure designed by the creative studio Unknown Works. It will be home to an evolving series of ‘microexhibitions’, giving space to the thinkers and makers of the future to share their ideas.

The Architecture Window opens with ‘Crunch’, a showcase of 18 graduates from architecture and design schools across the UK, whose work focuses on the reuse, reimagination and future of materials. These include Teodoro Rava’s prototype and test pieces for a new material developed as part of a project undertaken on his MA in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins. Using cellulose waste, hemp fibres and starch, ‘Hyper Wood’ mimics the anatomy of wood, in Rava’s words "blurring boundaries between what is synthetic and natural". Through a process inspired by candle-making, he repeatedly coats layered hemp structures into a liquid binding agent of his own recipe, which includes the starch of tubers from east London’s Ridley Road market. "When the starchy binder is mixed with fibres and dries out, it becomes really hard, and looks just like wood," says Rava.

Also looking to nature for inspiration is Yushen (Harry) Jia, a graduate of the MArch Architecture course at the Bartlett School of Architecture. On a study trip to Venice he observed how historic architectural materials interact with saltwater from the lagoon, and how salt crystallises and grows on underwater structures. This inspired ‘Aqua Frontier’, part of ongoing research into the use of salt as a building material. Jia describes the project as a proposal for a "designed ruin" that encourages a "symbiotic relationship between architecture and nature". One of the models on display in ‘Crunch’ is a roof tile intended to dissolve slowly, providing nutrients for plants to grow in its place.

Aqua Frontier - Model 1-Salt Prototyping,
Being Safe is Scary, Prototype, 2023

Walking around North Kensington, a richly diverse part of London that is riven with inequality, Royal College of Art graduate Lola Tartakover observed the way our shared urban landscapes are repeatedly divided with walls, fences and other barriers, underlining a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Her project ‘Being Safe is Scary’ includes a proposal for the subversion of metal fences by the addition of pink building blocks. "The model of the fence shows how I could repurpose these structures – the bricks are made from cardboard discarded on the street mixed with lime and pigment," she says.

Each of these designers, as well as the other emerging creatives showcased in ‘Crunch’, work with found materials and natural processes, seeking ways to collaborate – with people or nature – in order to create a new kind of material landscape.

Will Jennings is a writer, editor of recessed.space and director of arts charity Hypha Studios.

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