studiotmmr
fabrication, teaching, research
Timmer—a word meaning timber—anchors the studio in material craft and the long lineage of making. TMMR distills that word to its essentials, mirroring a practice that pares material down to its core and reshapes it into contemporary design. This compression from timmer to TMMR reflects the way the studio moves between raw matter, fabrication, and conceptual clarity.
My work builds on open thermodynamics, design thinking, and fabrication to examine how flows of matter and energy shape architectural form and practice. As embodied energy and carbon become central to architectural discourse, this inquiry grows increasingly urgent. Through installations, experimental projects, design research, and teaching, I develop methodologies—and mentor students—to engage critically with the material and energetic forces that constitute architecture. These intensive and extensive properties ground my work, and I translate open‑systems thinking across research, teaching, and service. In doing so, I resist deterministic environmental responses and instead advance nuanced, contingent methodologies, mappings, prototypes, and typological explorations suited to today’s environmental complexities.
To engage matter and energy more directly, I rely on digital fabrication and full‑scale making as primary modes of investigation. Iterative physical experiments and courses centered on hands‑on modeling allow my students and me to work with complex flows of material and energy through direct making. This systems‑based approach supports recursive, process‑driven design methods that privilege flow over fixed outcomes. By situating design at the level of systems rather than objects, my research and pedagogy aim to better prepare students and practitioners to confront the intertwined challenges of architecture and the environment.
Although my work is formally organized into research, teaching, and service, the themes of systems thinking, energy, and matter move fluidly across all three. This shared methodological foundation has allowed my research to expand beyond energy into community‑based design and modular furniture. That broadening reinforces the value of open thermodynamic systems, systemic design thinking, and fabrication as powerful frameworks for addressing contemporary architectural problems.
- alxtmmr