Circulating Matters is an outdoor installation for the 2022 Cornell Biennial,Futurities, Uncertain, that identifies the potential of collaboration among construction agents in order to reshape the quality of reused material into building insdustry at a local level in Ithaca, New York. The intervention is directed by Felix Heisel (AAP) across a multidsiciplinary team of architects, researchers, engineers, and community builders. The project directly reuses materials from the deconstruction of 206 College Ave (a 1910 residential structure that was slated for demolition and has been deconstructed instead by concerned academic and community stakeholders within an Engaged Cornell Grant), reactivating the material qualities and values of the building for the construction of the installation.

The spatial design plays on concepts of circulation and circularity by reimagining a staircase as a multidirectional, spatial folly engaging with its materials’ past (patina, dimensions) and future (reversible connections, design for disassembly). The proposal addresses the question how systemic concepts and methods for direct reuse of building elements at scale can be developed and implemented by combining panelized deconstruction with circular construction principles for a site-specific architectural application. The design aims to promote a design paradigm that begins from the uncertainties of local material availabilities, and foresees futurities of material and component reuse within industrialized re-construction. 

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The project emerged as the consequence of the development of the studio course (Unbuilding X Design) in Fall 2021 as part of the curriculum of the M.S. AAD program. Professor Felix Heisel proposed the study of different housing studies in Collegetown, analyzing construction entities and materials prior to their demolition. Once the opportunities for reuse of materials presented by the different cases were understood, the study was divided into teams to propose the construction of a pavilion from reused materials to serve as a meeting place for students in campus. Furthermore, my team proposal designed with Connor Yocum, Lulin He and Yao Wang, had the honor of being selected by the Council of the Arts at Cornell, follwing with the comission to build the project under the coordination and direction of Professor Felix Heisel within the Circular Construcion Lab. During the Spring of 2022 we focused on the cooperation with the structural team for the resizing of the project and its feasibility. In parallel, the material treatment phase (mainly denailing and cutting) started preparing beams, planks and timber pieces collected from the demolished houses—which were the only material source for the project. In the summer, the construction process began, joined by other fantastic students. Together, and after a period of collaboration with local companies, the project was completed by September 2022.