Architectural Association showcases wooden play apparatus and subterranean settlement projects

The Architectural Association (AA) has featured postgraduate thesis projects from its Design Research Laboratory, Design and Make, Emergent Technologies and Design, and Spatial Performance and Design programmes. Highlights include 'The Wild Thing', a sculptural wooden play apparatus by Design and Make students that combines traditional boatbuilding techniques with contemporary glue lamination, clad in clay tiles fired from site-dug earth. 'A Forest Datum', another Design and Make project, uses crown timber from forest canopy pruning in an experimental structural system and won a 2025 Wood Award. 'Subterranean Currents' by Emergent Technologies and Design students proposes a subterranean settlement in Egypt's Bahariya Oasis using a closed water-cycle system. 'Ember' by Design Research Laboratory students addresses wildfire resilience at the Wildland-Urban Interface near Los Angeles's Pacific Palisades. 'Not Yet' by Spatial Performance and Design students is a festival series debut at Stone Nest, London, integrating architecture, choreography, sound, and a plant-based culinary experience, continuing in a Norwegian quarry in June. Other projects include 'Architecture of Co-intelligence' reimagining seed banks as co-intelligent infrastructure, 'Tesser[act]' proposing a high-density urban fabric along the Thames, 'Up-Bridge City' using AI for urban growth, and 'Post-Mining Palimpsest' addressing ecological repair in Jharia, India.