Curate, Collage, Salvage
Robotic ceramic 3D-printing that reuses building detritus as structure.
- Location
- Salvage research · Hudson Valley brick country
- Coordinates
- N/A
- Category
- Architecture
Lucien Mount, Emma Xu, Nathan Algera · Y4/FA · Prof. Jonathan Scelsa + Kiki Goti · Exhibited, Haverstraw Brick Museum
SALVAGE IS THE ARCHITECTURE
Reuse the ruin.
How do you effectively use building waste and commemorate the ruin at the same time? Curate, Collage, Salvage interrogates the potential of building detritus for substantive reuse, transmuting rubble into a coherent architectural language through robotic ceramic 3D-printing.
The vision transcends superficial salvage aesthetics. Additions serve only to accentuate the salvage, drawing focus and celebrating it. It is an exercise in restraint: a reverence for the ruin.
SALVAGE ≠ GESTURE
A method for stitching fragments.
Targeted demolition extracts spolia (arches, windows, whole wythes of brick) from ruins across the Hudson Valley. Steel frames keep the brick in tension for transport, then it is welded into place on site.
The strategy stitches together fragments in a manner that honors and memorializes the inherent value of waste. Salvage ≠ gesture. Salvage = architecture.
FOUR WYTHES
Curator, salvager, wall, partitioner.
The wall is read as four layers, each with a job. The printed lenticular veil (the curator) encloses the site and frames views of the interior. Behind it the salvaged brick (the salvager) carries the memory of the ruin, the added wall gains new storage, and the inner partition sorts the rooms.
THE MODEL
Built at 1:1 in brick and clay.
The wythe system was built as a physical section: salvaged brick clamped against a lenticular veil printed in ceramic, the two materials meeting at full scale on a plywood base.
The veil is 3D-printed in clay on a robotic arm (an ABB IRB 2600 with an IRC5 controller), extruded through a 4mm nozzle in 2mm layers. It was exhibited at the Haverstraw Brick Museum.
IN THE MATERIAL
Up close the two hands of the wall are legible: the coiled clay of the printed veil, ruffled and lenticular, set against the flat courses of the salvaged brick. The robotic arm lays each bead of clay wet, layer on layer.
EXPOSED SALVAGE
The constructed wall emphasizes moments of exposed salvage: the printed ribs peel back to reveal brick, curating where the ruin is seen and where it is veiled.