Vernacular means of production and construction are characterised by some of the most resilient and sustainable forms of creating. These age-old practices passed on from generation to generation—in families that may even belie any association with the contemporary academic qualifications deemed necessary for practice—are the methods that come to one’s rescue when several contemporary techniques fail to deliver. Often discarded by contemporary creatives, builders and makers, in favour of processes dictated by the usage of both industrial materials and means, the repetitive practice of traditional architecture is construed as a hindrance to new innovations. However, can processes and systems ever remain unchanged in the midst of an ever-evolving landscape?

No matter the similarities between the most archaic architectural practices and their contemporaneous versions, the environments in which they are construed are distinctly disparate, thus calling for innovations and additions that can leave them relevant to extant times. For instance, the materials and in tandem, the waste that emerges upon the end of their life cycles, have increased in both numbers and variety from the time since human civilisation first began the process of constructing shelters. It is, hence, essential, to make relevant consideration of these novel materials when emulating archaic construction. A recent experimental project in New York, conceived by i/thee, seeks to do exactly this with two pavilions, namely Java and Jam. The two structures, clad in biocomposite material mixtures that are composed of spent coffee grounds and white grape skins, respectively, are developed as modern renditions of the wattle-and-daub construction.

While woven wattle walls are replaced with a computationally designed plywood lath in Java and Jam, the mud daub is alternated with bio-waste aggregates, sawdust, and cultivated straw, bound with non-toxic glues. "In this regard, the project aims to merge computational design and digital fabrication methodologies with time-tested and place-based techniques and, ultimately, to demonstrate a more critical integration of emerging technologies within the construction ecosystem," i/thee shares. The experimental pavilions, hence, serve as the ground for the exploration of organic material mixtures and their potential as a prominent building material in current times.

i/thee, founded and headed by designer, builder, and educator Neal Lucas Hitch; designer Martin Francis Hitch; and designer and educator Kristina Fisher, is a 'family and friends design collaborative' that seeks to celebrate all sentient beings through their work. On being asked the reasoning behind naming the studio i/thee, Neal Lucas Hitch shares, "The name i/thee references the need to establish more wholesome relationships between beings. Rather than 'you and me' or 'me and it' relationships, which put distance between subjects, i/thee bestows equal agency to all parties involved.”

The three designers specialise in different aspects of designing and building. While Neal Hitch’s focus lies on experimental fabrication, Martin Hitch exhibits a demonstrated history of working in the architecture and interiors industry, and Kristina Fisher’s research focuses on urban design and the relationship between ecology with the built environment. Together, the three designers create and build architectural edifices that are at once ecologically congruent and impart unique anomalous experiences.

With Java and Jam, the two pavilions located in Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, an arts centre and museum located at the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair in Bethel, New York, the design studio seeks to kindle the practice’s intent through an experiment that examines the potential of ecological architecture. Java and Jam were built as part of the Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival. Although conceived by i/thee, the construction was undertaken by an international team of students, professionals, and researchers. "The structures were designed in part as an extension of research I have been conducting at Cornell into biomaterials and computational formmaking. The project then manifested as a joint collaboration between i/thee, my research at Cornell, Texas Tech University, and Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival,” Neal Lucas Hitch shares. The final installations were exhibited in the campgrounds of the Catbird Music Festival located at the historic site of Woodstock.

Java and Jam are constructed in forms that seek to emulate some of the more difficult shapes in construction, that is, curves. While the construction of the installation began with 'a parametric form-finding exercise implementing custom coding to generate undulating ruled surfaces,' these surfaces were later unrolled digitally and fabricated onto plywood sheets. The sheets were then marked with kerf patterns, such that the plywood could bend in the desired angles while also functioning as a permeable lath that could hold onto bio-composite cladding. After optimising the size of the pavilions in tandem with the size of the site, the designers used digital fabrication tools to determine the amount of materials required to construct them. "It was a very experimental project which featured heavy use of computational and parametric tools. The biggest challenge of the project was calibrating the digital models to correspond accurately to physical material conditions," the designers share. Using the data determined from digital processes, the team then hand-built the two structures on site. The wood lath was cut by hand and re-rolled physically and the formwork, comprising bio-composite slurries, was plastered onto it.

"The goal was to imagine an architecture freed from exploitive material practices. The bio-composite rendering is completely natural and biodegradable. The process of construction was very interesting—on one hand, we used many experimental processes (mixing coffee with glues and using computational tools to design plywood forms), but on the other hand, we applied the composite using traditional methods of plastering. In this way, it really did feel like we were somehow bridging this gulf across time—mixing emerging and historic building technologies to conceive of an entirely new architecture,” Neal Lucas Hitch explains the intent and process of building Java and Jam.

While Java has a diameter of 12 feet and stands four feet tall, Jam has a diameter of eight feet and stands eight feet tall. On being asked the reasoning behind naming the public installations Java and Jam, the American designers share, "Java, made out of waste coffee grounds, is named after the American colloquialism for coffee. On the other hand, Jam, made from waste products of the winemaking industry, is named after grape preservatives, which the material rendering resembles.”

For Java, the makers integrated a bio-composite mixture of spent coffee grounds as the primary aggregate, with equal parts sawdust and cut straw that the team grew and processed on-site over the course of a season. The coffee grounds used for Java were sourced locally from Gimme Coffee! in Ithaca, New York. The aggregate made with coffee grounds, sawdust and cut straw was mixed with wheat paste, a non-toxic, plant-based adhesive that could serve as the binder.

Jam, the taller installation of the two, comprises a digitally fabricated wattle wall, upon which a paste composed primarily of white grape pomace collected from Damiani Wine Cellars in Burdett, New York, USA is glued. The white grape pomace is a byproduct of the wine-making industry and consists of pressed grape skins, seeds, and stalks. The final formwork used in Jam also comprises portions of sawdust and food-safe PVA glues.

"Both Java and Jam, in their entirety, are made from recyclable and/or biodegradable materials processed using a mixture of digital and handcraft techniques. To this point, the structures attempt to reroute research trajectories in automated fabrication and to critically question the use of technology in design—not as a regressive ideology but instead as a way of preserving endangered cultures of building and fostering meaningful labour,” the designers share.

Developed as experiments, the architecture pavilions are being monitored so as to determine and measure the rates of weathering and deformation they suffer over the next couple of months. Using this analysis, the designers will formulate improvements for future prototypes of the structure. The goal of this project is to develop material aggregates and processes that can compare with the strength and durability of plaster and concrete. While the current prototypes of this material experimentation is sturdy enough to build furniture that can withstand substantial weight and stress, the designers seek to experiment with such aggregates in a manner that they can both serve as building materials and be fully waterproof.

When asked about the process of reusing the materials after the structures complete their life cycle, the designers share, “When the life cycle of the installations have expired, the organic materials will be stripped and composted, and the plywood will be washed, recycled and/or reused in subsequent experiments.”

The application of organic materials in building the pavilions renders its surface the look and feel of earthen materials such as adobe or mud plaster. Its odour, however, is strong enough to extend beyond the perimeter of the structures by several feet. “Each structure had a strong smell, of coffee grounds and fermented grapes respectively,” Neal Hitch shares. “When we were on site we were noticing and identifying different thresholds: when you are 30 metres away you can see the structures over the hill; when you are five metres away you can smell the structures; when you are one metre away, you can touch the structures. The fact that the material has such a strong olfactory dimension creates this threshold of scent that doesn’t typically happen with normal projects,” he adds.

Beyond their experiments with Java and Jam, i/thee is working on various other projects. Their ‘Toast Pavilion,’ to be built using using mixtures of glue, clay, and biochar, serves as the next iteration of the Java and Jam project. With several future prototypes, the designers intend to scale up the methods and sizes of structures.

Project Details

Name: Java and Jam
Location: Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the Historic site of Woodstock
Area: 200 square feet (18.5 square metres)
Year of completion: 2023
Architect: i/thee
Design team: Neal Lucas Hitch, Erin Linsey Hunt
Collaborators and builders: Enrique Espinoza, Mark Segovia, Zoe Wall, Shailyn Beaty, Matthew Coyle, Emily Hammer, Kristen McCullough, Emily Perez, Abigail Petrofes, Kani Willis, Antonio Braz Camargo, Aiden McGorry, Isaac Mendez, Melissa Eagleton, Kiri Channer