studio i/thee designs architecture that listens to mud, algae, wood, and weather

Softness functions as a way of working with the world, granting agency to mud, algae, paper, wood, weather, and play. Public installations, experimental shelters, and landscape pavilions are built through exchange rather than command. Materials are poured, eroded, laminated, stacked, or cast into the ground, then allowed to retain traces of gravity, touch, climate, and chance. The practice is framed through “cosentience,” connecting living and nonliving things and producing tenderness. A pavilion can behave like a puddle, a play structure can draw adults into bodily curiosity, and a paper shelter can start from a hole in the earth. Spaces invite gathering, climbing, sitting, looking, and movement while raising ecological questions. Puddle Pavilion uses algae-based bio-resin cast directly on the ground without formwork, forming a translucent canopy that preserves the memory of its making.

"Experimental design studio i/thee treats softness as a way of working with the world, giving agency to mud, algae, paper, wood, weather, and play. Across public installations, experimental shelters, and landscape pavilions, the studio builds through exchange instead of command. Materials are poured, eroded, laminated, stacked, or cast into the ground, then allowed to carry traces of gravity, touch, climate, and chance. The work is generous as it asks architecture to listen before it takes shape."

"The team describes its practice through the idea of 'cosentience,' a term which it uses to connect living and nonliving things. That sensibility gives the work its unusual tenderness. A pavilion can behave like a puddle. A play structure can invite adults back into bodily curiosity. A paper shelter can begin in a hole dug into the earth. In each case, the studio's architecture gains its form through contact."

"Puddle Pavilion (read here), a free-form canopy hovering above Mud Creek in Bondurant, Iowa. Designed from algae-based bio-resin, the structure was cast directly on the ground with no formwork. Liquid resin spread across the surface, gathering into uneven edges and layered thicknesses before curing into a translucent sheet. Once lifted onto its supports, the puddle became a public canopy."

"The project is compelling because it keeps the memory of its making visible. Its surface suggests water caught mid-movement, with a shape guided by gravity as much as by the studio's hand. As a public structure, it offers shade and a point of pause along the creek, yet its larger proposition is material. Algae-based resin becomes a way to imagine construction"

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine