Sawdust poses a particularly severe threat to the environment as it almost always ends up in landfill, while when it comes to plastic a whopping 90% of the material is not recycled. To alleviate this issue, the design merges these two ingredients into a multi-material composition, ultimately utilising it as a building material.

Spaces of variable porosity, transparency, and thickness are manufactured by making use of particle-based digital design methods and dual nozzle extrusion techniques to organise the sawdust inside the plastic matrix. This enables us to adjust internal comfort, visibility, and privacy.

The ensuing building proposal is for the multi-material to be 3D printed within a lattice framework built in a vacant, disused area in London’s Shoreditch. The mix is recursively deposited in parts of the framework to define spaces for exhibitions and other events, then removed, shredded, and converted into filament, only to be 3D printed again to form new spaces in this constantly evolving artificial material landscape.