A Method for Designing with Deadwood for Architectural Acoustics

This paper presents the investigation and proposition of how to design with deadwood as a material resource, and how it can be applied to acoustic design in architecture. The study is focused on Poplar wood in progressed decay, where visual, structural, and sound characteristics are analyzed and discovered through material studies, prototype studies, computational studies and measurement studies. The research findings have both philosophical and practical consequences for how we understand material resources, their structural state and how we can understand biogenic material transformations as part of the design process that leads to a better understand of using the regenerative materials we have available on the planet. These aspects are related to the notion of tectonics in architecture, which theoretical elements are used as a platform for conceptual and applied studies. The research suggests an understanding and development in future studies and practices, by a focus on transformational and temporal acting materials, leading to a continuous material definition, and therefore persistent and dynamic architectural articulations, both visually and acoustically. This research and forward leading proposition are argued to open novel pathways for material practices as an approach that engage with material and environmental agency and uncertainty, which in turn empowers architecture to address urgent questions of material scarcity and material-climatic relations driven by the built environment.