BLANK: SPECULATIONS ON CLT

EDITORS: HANIF KARA, JENNIFER BONNER

Lucidly and boldly identify the design potential of this promising, innovative material beyond its well-documented environmental benefits

This book advances a much-needed and transformational agenda for making architecture today through a close reading of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and its material unit, the CLT blank. Both matter-of-fact and multivalent, economical and excessive, the blank has untapped potential for experimentation, innovation, and research in architecture at various scales. Blank brings together texts and work from a wide range of theorists and practitioners who make CLT central to their inquiry and, in turn, suggest design approaches that broaden the material’s cultural, spatial, and technological significance for architecture, education, engineering, and industry.

The book claims new conceptual territory for a material with extensive appeal whose theorization has been stuck in narratives of its sustainability. Slippages between art, architecture, and science help position Blank as an antidote to current conversations about CLT, which are fixated on its mass production and carbon footprint, portraying it as a bland product rather than an enabler of design. The book argues for the material’s aesthetic and spatial potential, conjuring the kind of world that CLT can create. Striking visuals contribute to repositioning CLT architecture though new forms of representation and design responses that continue to stay in touch with pragmatics.

“Essays and design work that exemplify cross-disciplinary pedagogical collaboration, offering a model for how architecture and engineering can fluidly respond to contemporary issues.”

Essays and contributions by:

Jennifer Bolande, artist based in Los Angeles, California
Jennifer Bonner, MALL; Associate Professor of Architecture, Harvard GSD
Nelson Byun, -NESS Projects
Sean Canty, Studio SC; Assistant Professor of Architecture, Harvard GSD
Courtney Coffman, Manager of Lectures and Publications, Princeton University School of Architecture
Lauren Halsey, artist based in Los Angeles, California
Sam Jacob, Sam Jacob Studio; Clinical Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture; Visiting Professor, Yale School of Architecture.
Hanif Kara, AKT II; Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology, Harvard GSD
Jayne Kelley, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture
Chris Lee, Serie Architects; Arthur Rotch Design Critic, Harvard GSD
Erika Naginski, Director of Doctoral Programs and Robert P. Hubbard Professor of Architectural History, Harvard GSD
Erin Putalik, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Architectural History, University of Virginia School of Architecture
Nader Tehrani, NADAAA; Dean, Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, Cooper Union
Yasmin Vobis, Ultramoderne; Assistant Professor of Architecture, Harvard GSD

Student contributors:

Calvin Boyd, Benson Chien, Kyat Chin, Elif Erez, Daniel Garcia, Anna Goga, Ian Grohsgal, Edward Han Myo Oo, Anna Kaertner, Hiroshi Kaneko, Aryan Khalighy, Edgar Rodriguez, Alejandro Saldarriaga, Peeraya Suphasidh

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