Unruly Matter. Strategies for Designing and Fabricating with Whole Trees

Unruly Matter is an edited volume and visual field guide that explores how designers and architects can work with irregular and undervalued parts of trees. Structured around a taxonomy of such material misfits – Y (tree forks), J (crooked timbers), X (inosculations), O (bark), and I (small-diameter thinnings) – it brings together essays and projects that reactivate the nearly forgotten tradition of whole-tree use through emerging design and fabrication technologies.

Developed within the irreguLAB (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar), the book challenges an industrial logic that, in the context of climate crisis and resource scarcity, is increasingly untenable: tree parts that cannot be transformed into predictable and standardised materials are normally chipped, burnt, or pressed into anonymous composites. Understanding irregularity instead as a productive design resource, the projects transform irregular tree components into furniture, design objects, and architectural structures. Negotiating between digital precision and material variability, the book proposes new material logics and aesthetics for designing with the unruliness of grown matter.