Our Impact — Hyphae

Recent Teaching:

2025 - CU Boulder ENVD Program.

LAND2100 Studio 1: Foundations of Landscape Architecture

Recent Fellowship:

2025 Design workshop research fellowship. Awarded through Design Workshop

Aaron Woolverton, Junhong Fu, Grayson summer, Peter samuels

Designing a Model Flow: Integrating Predective AI into Design.

Recent Talks:

06.05.35 North Carolina ASLA Conference

Designing Smarter - how to get the most out of AI and landscape architecture (A.Woolverton)

11.12.22 ASLA 2022 Conference:

Beyond Land Acknowledgment: Building Capacity for Contextual Design on Native Land

11.03.22 University of Guelph MLA Research Methods | Prototyping + Modelling as Research:

Overview of Master’s Projects

03.17.22 Georgia Tech | Ceramic Fabrication:

Overview of Master’s Projects

01.25.22 University of Oregon | Augmented Natures:

From 3D Printing to the Olla Project (H.Tietz)

Foreground for Mosses: Designing 3D Printed Clay Bryobricks to Enhance the Built Environment

By Heather Rae Tietz Woolverton / June, 2021

This project explores the potential between the ecological services of mosses and designed ceramic substrate for creating ecologically enhanced landscapes. Communities and environments are negatively affected by areas with impervious surfaces and pollution. The efficacy of new typologies in landscape architecture, such as living walls, could be improved with mosses’ ecological benefits and resilience. Clay is an abundant resource that can be reshaped utilizing 3D printing and support the propagation of mosses. This research-through-design approach interrogates the potential growth of mosses vis-à-vis experiments in 3D clay printing to create optimal substrates.

The experimental design was installed in four locations testing four unique substrates against moss growth. For the three-month duration of the experiment, monitoring through rephotography, a hygrometer, and written observations tracked responses to environmental conditions. Experimental results informed a framework for designing with mosses and a rapid prototyping process using an advanced 3D clay printer to develop a modular screen system. For the final design phase, the forms were simplified and contextualized at Lawrence Hall at the University of Oregon as a speculative case study. Experiments that received more irrigation and less solar exposure exhibited more moss growth. This research, experiment, and subsequent design work serve as a proof of concept for designing with mosses and clay using emerging technology for creating performative landscapes.

Stereoscopic documentation of protonema growth 82X

The collection and form are inspired by self-organizing barnacles adapted to life at the intertidal zone. Their structure attaches directly to the substrate, helping barnacles survive in hazardous environments. The tiling forms at the bases give more information with increased aspect, varying heights, slopes, and apertures similar to the arrangement of barnacles. Creating a range of amplification in the walls with greater thickness at the base towards a thinner a wall at the top where support was necessary for success of the print. This gradient in thickness is similar to how successful pottery is formed on the wheel. Fologram, another great visualization tool was introduced to me called that expresses the diameter of the layer through a piped mesh.

When first setting up the printer, I adjusted the parameters in Simplify3D to slice the model to generate the print. This program provided a simple output for creating stacked layers. By having access to the gcode, I was able to produce a successful print finally. The gcode directly translates the model of the digital design to the printer. Without the translation of the gcode, the printer would not be able to print. It took months to set up the gcode properly to print! I started by printing the largest and most central barnacle and tried different rotation degrees at the top, fillet, and number of curves. I selected the central taller barnacles with greater apertures because I wanted the slope to be greater for the success of the print and wanted the light to enter the interior spaces. This form kept collapsing and knew that I could not proceed if I was unable to print the central barnacle successfully.The printing process required numerous tests to learn about the optimal clay consistency and design for creating successful interfaces. The geometry of the ten interfaces was adapted with a woven toolpath to create a gradation in amplification unique to each form. The gradation in amplification is essential to the structure and as a variable for the experiment. Surprisingly when the printer translated the interfaces from the digital model, they rotated in the opposite direction, interfering with tiling intention at the bases.

The first site for moss collection was with Bruce McCune, Professor of Botany & Plant Pathology at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. With his expertise in bryology, he identified the mosses harvested from rock, roof, and soil and tested the pH of the ceramic and clay substrate. When producing the clay and moss 3D integrated forms, more moss was needed and collected near Lawrence Hall at the University of Oregon and rocks from a neighborhood in southern Eugene. A range of unknown mosses were collected from the Eugene sites and were harvested from a harder substrate that demonstrated qualities similar to ceramic material.

Purpose - The main experimental design of the four total experiments produced in this Master’s Project inquired about repeated forms on four unique substrates in a residential setting. This main experiment was the most rigorous of the four conducted experiments because it explored the formal design characteristics of the designed barnacle substrates individually, as a group of ten unique designs, four unique substrate groups, and additional process work. During week eleven of the experiment, a sweet gum tree growing southeast of the deck provided more consistent shade and cooler temperatures. During the midpoint assessment of the experiment, the attachment of the mosses was not correlated with a certain aspect.

Field Notes: Week Eleven - 4/19/21
In tray 2 of ceramic with 10% sawdust burnout, barnacles 8 and 9 are showing green. In tray 3, barnacles 8 and 10 are showing green on the north side and inside. All have darker hue at the base. There is significant chipping at the tops of the tallest barnacles due to the salt crystals. In tray 4, all but barnacles 4 and 5 are showing green at the base. Barnacle 9 is the exhibits the most green on the Northwest side. In tray 5 of the process pieces, all show signs of protonema growth at the base. When misting the experiment, the upper mosses become unattached.

Macrophotography images left to right: Protonema shown growing best on barnacle #9 of ceramic-only. Protonema growing along the interior of the barnacle on interface #10.

Stereoscope images left to right. 16X amplification of unknown filamentous material on ceramic-only barnacle #9. 50X amplification of moss spores and rhizoid development on ceramic-only, barnacle #9.

With the advanced technology of the Potterbot 7 model, I printed with more and harder clay which meant working on a larger scale, creating greater texture, and exploring overhangs with pockets. Taking the pocket concept forward from the flat panels of the rain screen, this idea was translated into a five-axis petal pocket form. The forms had various tiers of pockets, with varying distances between them. The internal and external geometries were enabled stacking. I was interested in adapting the concept of the stacking forms to create vertical impact and arraying them in one direction to create a screen system composed of Bryobricks. This rapid prototyping process was executed over the span of a week, and I tested seven prints, making adjustments for each except for the final design. I was curious if I could achieve a cleaner print with the final design by reprinting; however, it still did not materialize with the precision I intended for the pockets.

Expanding on the design of the rapidly prototype bryobrick for the screen system, I was interested in creating three types of bryobeads that would stack on a stainless steel pipe. The varying patterning of small forms would increase surface area and create variable slopes that would cast shade and receive water. For the final phase of rapid prototyping, I chose geometry with five axes and a 32 percent rotation to create more variation, stability, and surface area. The three types of forms are called the base, shaft, and capital, borrowing language from the structure of a column. The three types hold the possibility to be positioned right-side-up and upside down.

After analyzing each of the experiment sites’ solar hours and solar radiation, it was important to integrate this data to inform the final speculative design work into a Bryobead Matrix. By connecting the geometry of the patterned bryobead pipes and the ground plane in Grasshopper, I was able to determine which places in the courtyard received 3.5 hours of sunlight per day. The geometry distributed into the shaded areas included the bryobead piped column with the third pattern, a 1’ radius circle at the ground level for holding moss and a rock, and a connecting irrigation zig zag pipe across the courtyard at Lawrence Hall at Lawrence Hall at the University of Oregon courtyard. Within Twinmotion, a range of views, seasons, and weather conditions are represented to show the aesthetics and function of the space.

Algae as Agents

By Aaron Lee Woolverton / June, 2021

As a means of understanding landscape phenomenon, responsive modeling establishes a place to concurrently hinge between generating and testing hypotheses while incorporating the expanding agency of computational modeling and live data streams. Inspired by the ideas of process discourse and research through design, this project will investigate the harmful recurrence of algae blooms in South Florida waterways through the means of responsive modeling. Algae as Agents aims to define the responsive model as a research method via case study investigation and analysis; subsequently, responsive modeling practices and concepts has the potential to be translated from these case studies into the context of South Florida via projective design methodologies.

The overall goal of the project is to establish an iterative design approach as the platform to understand the complexities of algae mitigation while simultaneously providing the researcher a place to test design outcomes experimentally. Following these design translations is a reflective meta-analysis revealing both the limitations and knowledge garnered throughout the design process. This discussion expands the meaning of the responsive model while providing it more definition within the realm of landscape architecture research strategies. By projecting responsive modeling concepts into this context, we have an opportunity to speculate upon this issue, illuminate algae’s nature through an apolitical lens, and expand our growing list of research design methodologies.

Macrolens Imagery of cyanobacterial algae growth on day 2

The overall purpose of this model aims to analyze and document the movement of algal biomass throughout Lake Okeechobee. In doing this, we may establish a dynamic pattern or relationship between time and biomass movement. The model helps us elucidate the algae biomass that proliferates throughout certain times of the year as well as provides the designer a platform to analyze algae scums both spatially and temporally. The model has an algorithm that defines a spatial boundary around algae flotsam which may suggest areas of higher priority within the Lake Okeechobee boundaries. Although more dynamic than NCCOS’s representation of algae in Lake Okeechobee, the model can only reproduce daily imagery of Lake Okeechobee due to the Satellite’s orbital period. This means the model is limited in terms of temporal scale. With this, the data sensed by the Sentinel-3 is limited in terms of what is visible to the Satellite’s camera.

St. Lucie Estuary, FL — This model aims to establish relationships between sediment drop-off and water salinity levels to communicate where algae typically proliferates. Cyanobacteria is a harmful, freshwater species of bacteria that is negatively impacted by sediment, therefore, it may be mitigated in areas where salinity fluctuates and deposition may occur due to suspended sediment drop-out. Major Limitations with this model found massive gaps in sensed data throughout the Estuary. Applying more sensing instruments in this Estuary may aid in understanding water quality impact.