Hive, designed and developed by Ye Sul E. Cho, Ji Shi, Meghan Taylor, James Clarke-Hicks, Isabel Ochoa and David Correa was recently profiled in Detail.
Hive is an interlocking masonry wall composed of 175 unique 3D-printed clay bricks. Combining traditional ceramics, smart geometry and robotic precision, the design embraces the natural material properties of clay, allowing its malleability and fluidity to shape the clay units’ form and surface quality.
The gradual opening and closing of apertures in each clay unit creates undulating variations in privacy and light along the wall. Like a honeycomb, the aggregation of hexagonal units produces a strong and materially efficient structure.
The design of the masonry units, and the overall wall design, are the result of a highly iterative design and fabrication process. Conceived as digital craftsmanship, the development process involved working back and forth between digital and analogue models in order to respond to the dynamic material qualities of wet clay, requiring formulating clay mixes suitable for 3D-printing, new computational design and fabrication tools, extensive material testing, and multiple assembly mock-ups. This approach embraces the spirit of traditional ceramic craft with robotic precision, offering new avenues for material expression and geometric complexity within this field.