This chapter explores building as a form of material inquiry. The process of building generates new ideas and questions that remain latent in unbuilt designs. These ideas and questions are uniquely trans-scalar and boundary spanning as compared to material inquiries that focus on isolated material attributes. Building projects embed material inquiries within the open systems that make up our environment. Thinking about material performance in this way can co-produce political, social, economic, and ecologic relationships that extend design agency beyond the artifact.
