Frictitious Matters

Abstract

Wood arrives on site abstracted into rectangular studs; steel beams, once a mineral soup, are extrusions with patented silhouettes; and stone is severed from time, processed into thin shiny slabs. We’ve manipulated our terrestrial matter to conform to smooth expectations: building materials are homogenous, standard, orthogonal, drawable, and specifiable. We live in the modern fantasy of “ frictionlessness,” where material becomes product and smoothness lubricates the flow of capital. Today architects don’t craft, but rather we specify.

Granite, unlike processed ‘plastic’ materials, resists the abstraction of typical architectural production. It is too hard, too heavy, and too heterogeneous for specification. I argue that granite’s high-friction properties – if carefully understood and deliberately worked with – pose new design potentials. Granite’s microstructure causes it to cleave, or split, almost orthogonally. It's surface of crystals self-interlocks, allowing for jamming. And its high mass and friction cause it to pile with a 45-degree angle of repose.

Yet, we would sooner expend immense energy to downgrade granite from a 230-newton piece of stone to a 40-newton piece of concrete than embrace the design potentials of aplasticity. ⁰ Abandoned for its “nuisance” properties, granite has been relegated to the realm of finish.

Friction-intolerant and smoothness-obsessed, we are estranged from our materials. This thesis presents a methodology to reconsider architectural material culture through the embrace of aplastic material. Material properties are not incidental or inconvenient, but rather invitations for co-authorship. Working directly with Barre Gray™ granite through mock-ups, miniatures, and models, I offer a craft-optimized slowness, implanting the architect in streams of “ waste,” rather than extraction, to co-design with a “difficult” material.