Fig. 1 & 2: Morphing Canopy with NiTi hinges for Forest canopy gap mitigation (Structure self-designed, Environment imagined using Google Gemini), Fig. 3 & 4: Post wildfire seeder made out of SMP (Structure self-designed, Environment imagined using Google Gemini), Fig. 5 & 6: Aquatic Debris Collector made out of wood veneer and SMP (Structure self-designed, Environment imagined using Google Gemini), Fig. 7: SMP Structure/Joinery explorations
MORPH (Morphological Optimization Research in Programmable Hybrids)
This research investigates how smart materials can detect and respond to ecosystem changes (across wetlands, urban heat islands, and coastal environments). Moving beyond isolated technological solutions, the work proposes a vulnerability-based framework where materials function as active participants in ecological processes through morphing physical behaviors and actuation. The study introduces a material matrix that matches environmental triggers with ecosystem vulnerabilities to guide material interventions. This approach transforms static designs into dynamic, responsive systems where actuation itself becomes a medium of making that shapes ecological conditions.
Climate change is placing unprecedented stress on ecosystems worldwide. The objects we design—buildings, infrastructure, products, interfaces—need to sense and respond to these environmental shifts. Smart materials change their properties when exposed to stimuli like moisture, temperature, light, or chemicals, offering potential for designed objects to engage directly with ecosystem dynamics.
Current approaches treat smart materials as isolated technological fixes, disconnected from the ecological contexts where they operate. This research asks: how can smart materials detect and respond to ecosystem signals? As Skylar Tibbits notes, materials can "compute and exhibit behaviour that we typically associate with biological organisms." This work moves from standardized industrial materials toward a framework where materials sense and communicate environmental data, where breakdown becomes transformation, and where static objects become dynamic, responsive surfaces.
The research organizes this framework through the "4 M's": Method (how actuation occurs/smart materials used), Make (the relationship between form and function), Medium (what triggers actuation), and Modality (systems and applications). Modality raises a critical question: whom do designs serve, and whom do they harm? Every designed object carries an environmental footprint with real-world consequences that designers rarely consider when assembling interfaces, defining requirements, or selecting materials.
This research reframes environmental design hierarchies by recognizing both human and non-human actants—anything with agency that influences a system—as stakeholders in constant flux. Rather than individualizing outcomes, the work "personalizes" entire systems, viewing ecosystems as living machines composed of all non-humans (animals to microbes, across land, sea, air, and underground) and all planetary elements (vegetation, water, air, soil, climate, landforms, sunlight).
Current approaches treat smart materials as isolated technological fixes, disconnected from the ecological contexts where they operate. This research asks: how can smart materials detect and respond to ecosystem signals? As Skylar Tibbits notes, materials can "compute and exhibit behaviour that we typically associate with biological organisms." This work moves from standardized industrial materials toward a framework where materials sense and communicate environmental data, where breakdown becomes transformation, and where static objects become dynamic, responsive surfaces.
The research organizes this framework through the "4 M's": Method (how actuation occurs/smart materials used), Make (the relationship between form and function), Medium (what triggers actuation), and Modality (systems and applications). Modality raises a critical question: whom do designs serve, and whom do they harm? Every designed object carries an environmental footprint with real-world consequences that designers rarely consider when assembling interfaces, defining requirements, or selecting materials.
This research reframes environmental design hierarchies by recognizing both human and non-human actants—anything with agency that influences a system—as stakeholders in constant flux. Rather than individualizing outcomes, the work "personalizes" entire systems, viewing ecosystems as living machines composed of all non-humans (animals to microbes, across land, sea, air, and underground) and all planetary elements (vegetation, water, air, soil, climate, landforms, sunlight).
Through this lens of human and non-human entanglement, the research borrows a vulnerability-based framework from University of Connecticut's Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) to guide a material matrix matching environmental stimuli with complementary ecosystems. It identifies vulnerable "symptoms" preventing actants and their inhabitants from thriving, then designs responsive material interventions accordingly.
Through modular making styles, the work embraces compositional strategies where material assemblies can be reconfigured, layered, or decomposed based on seasonal cycles, intensity of environmental stress, or localized ecosystem needs. Shape-change operates across multiple scales: shape memory alloys and shape memory polymers, which transition between programmed geometries when exposed to thermal thresholds, to the full-scale deployment of hygroscopic surfaces that curl, unfold, or contract in response to moisture patterns. The terminology of actuation, transformation, and responsiveness defines a design vocabulary where materials are not passive substrates but active agents of environmental sensing and intervention. This approach draws from concepts of programmable matter, 4D printing (where time becomes the fourth dimension of form), and material computation.
By defining the work through morphing behaviors, the research establishes materials as entities capable of adaptive change, where form is always provisional, always becoming, always in dialogue with the environmental conditions that sustain or threaten ecosystem resilience. This is “making as metabolism”: materials that breathe, swell, degrade, and regenerate in rhythms aligned with the living systems they aim to support.
Through modular making styles, the work embraces compositional strategies where material assemblies can be reconfigured, layered, or decomposed based on seasonal cycles, intensity of environmental stress, or localized ecosystem needs. Shape-change operates across multiple scales: shape memory alloys and shape memory polymers, which transition between programmed geometries when exposed to thermal thresholds, to the full-scale deployment of hygroscopic surfaces that curl, unfold, or contract in response to moisture patterns. The terminology of actuation, transformation, and responsiveness defines a design vocabulary where materials are not passive substrates but active agents of environmental sensing and intervention. This approach draws from concepts of programmable matter, 4D printing (where time becomes the fourth dimension of form), and material computation.
By defining the work through morphing behaviors, the research establishes materials as entities capable of adaptive change, where form is always provisional, always becoming, always in dialogue with the environmental conditions that sustain or threaten ecosystem resilience. This is “making as metabolism”: materials that breathe, swell, degrade, and regenerate in rhythms aligned with the living systems they aim to support.
Note: This is a work-in-progress Thesis for the Master's in Industrial Design program at the Rhode Island School of Design.