STUDIO OVERVIEW
Plastic Reimagined is a design research studio and public installation that repositions recycled plastics as both architectural substrate and epistemic medium. Conducted within the Architectural Design + Research Studio at Georgia Tech School of Architecture and supported by the Arts at Tech Catalyst Grant, the project interrogates the material, technological, and cultural entanglements of plastic as a site for computational form-making, environmental speculation, and aesthetic contradiction.
Rather than treating plastic as inert detritus, the studio approached it as an anthro-material—a synthetic yet anthropogenic actor whose existence embodies the contradictions of late capitalism, material innovation, and ecological anxiety. As Jane Bennett writes, even discarded matter possesses “thing-power”—agency beyond human use. Plastic, in this context, is studied not only for its machinic pliability but also for its cultural charge: ubiquitous yet invisible, banal yet eternal. Jeffrey Meikle reminds us that plastic is not merely a commodity but a cultural condition—one that reflects the contradictions of modernity through mutability, mimicry, and moral ambiguity.
The studio reconfigured post-consumer plastics—HDPE and PLA—sourced from campus and community waste streams into architectural matter through a dual workflow of direct material engagement and computational modeling. Initial phases prioritized hands-on prototyping to understand thermal behaviors, pliability, and structural potential through melting, compression, and forming. These insights informed voxel-based modeling, physics-based simulation, and digital fabrication. Computational tools were not used to prescribe form but to amplify and negotiate the materials’ complex behaviors. Final outcomes merged analog and digital techniques—CNC milling, waterjet cutting, thermal fusing, and hand-finishing—into workflows for micro-architectural seating prototypes. As “architecture in miniature,” the thirteen chairs condensed spatial, material, and cultural questions into civic-scale experiments—positioning plastic as a lens for circular design and the aesthetics of waste.
The work culminated in exhibitions at Atlanta Contemporary, the Goat Farm Arts Center, and the upcoming installation at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport—demonstrating how pedagogy can scale into civic agency and public discourse.