The studio will be focused upon the making and exploring of architecture where the 'material concept' is an extension and expression of the fundamental ideas of the project. That is to say that one can find certain works of architecture where the material and it's resultant technology or fabrication became instrumental to the realization of the ideas. In whatever form those may take -- and the resultant physical form is a synthesis of the working and transformation of that material with its ability to be woven into a meaningful 3 dimensional entity. In such cases technology, irrespective of applied 'isms such as hi-tech or lo-tech, is not simply the means to an end to realize a previously conceived form, but rather becomes the "art of the technology" - implying a level of innovation and creative manipulation to turn what might seem to just be a material into a composition of beauty and poetry as well as of environmental control. Several contemporary architects are exemplary of this form of creativity who search for the essential qualities of the material which are then crafted into ideas of layer, boundary, skin, surface, porosity and so forth: Peter Zumthor, Kazuyo Sejima, Shiguru Ban, Glen Murcutt, Renzo Piano, Michael Hopkins to name but a few architects working in different ways in different continents. In reading of Louis Kahn's Exeter Library, he talks about reaching his construction decisions about the form after consulting the material" "The brick was always talking to me, saying you're missing an opportunity."