The Bartlett
Summer Show 2026
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Contra Construct

Project details

Programme
Unit PG23
Year 5

Architectural practice is dominated by a uniform, deterministic approach to drawing. Shaped by modernism and amplified by capitalism, it prioritises precision and quantification, leaving little room for tolerance, agency, or unpredictability in architectural production. This logic also favours hyper-industrialised materials that eliminate irregularity in construction.

Timber, an inherently unique material, was reduced to a commodified resource. Through deterministic drawing methods, wood is treated as a tabula rasa, participating in a broader pursuit of control that marginalises irregularity, craft, and embodied knowledge.

I explore alternative tools that acknowledge timber's individuality. Drawing on Thailand's vernacular, I imagine a speculative practice in which making remained central to architectural production. Vernacular 1:1 drawing functioned simultaneously as design and fabrication: a model in which hand, body, and material co-produced form.

Through this reimagining, the project investigates how bodily intelligence might again shape architecture, developing tools and workflows that embrace indeterminacy and propose a tactile, situated, and non-linear approach to design.

The drawing tool is not merely a means of representation but an active participant in design, extending the body to transform raw materials through mental metamorphosis and return them at 1:1 scale.

Drawing Stick

The drawing tool is not merely a means of representation but an active participant in design, extending the body to transform raw materials through mental metamorphosis and return them at 1:1 scale.

A 1:1 semi-spatial handrail prototype inspired by green timber. The second iteration adds a charcoal tip for greater detail and fabrication accuracy, creating a feedback loop in which making informs drawing and drawing informs making.

Recursive Workflow

A 1:1 semi-spatial handrail prototype inspired by green timber. The second iteration adds a charcoal tip for greater detail and fabrication accuracy, creating a feedback loop in which making informs drawing and drawing informs making.

Drawing is multi-temporal: memory, present perception, and evolving form. Machining is linear and predetermined. In the handrail, machining becomes drawing-like, a formative process from pen to coded drill bits on timber: a machine hand.

Handrail Prototype

Drawing is multi-temporal: memory, present perception, and evolving form. Machining is linear and predetermined. In the handrail, machining becomes drawing-like, a formative process from pen to coded drill bits on timber: a machine hand.

This project is not about returning to previous ways of making. Rather, it seeks to transcend the practice by giving it a twenty-first-century edge through the appropriation of industrialised and technocratic tools, such as the robotic arm.

Machina Adiutor

This project is not about returning to previous ways of making. Rather, it seeks to transcend the practice by giving it a twenty-first-century edge through the appropriation of industrialised and technocratic tools, such as the robotic arm.

The practice culminates in a multi-scalar architectural object: a Thai spirit house. Operating across scales, each designed and fabricated element recursively informs the others, resolving the architecture through an iterative process of making.

The Spirit House

The practice culminates in a multi-scalar architectural object: a Thai spirit house. Operating across scales, each designed and fabricated element recursively informs the others, resolving the architecture through an iterative process of making.

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The Bartlett
Summer Show 2026
25 June – 12 July
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