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Computational design tools and digital fabrication machines have enabled new levels of complexity in construction, allowing architects to design and materialise a wide range of expressive and novel forms. Unfortunately, the infinite freedom of computational design software often does not reflect the material constraints of reality, and the realisation of digital designs can be wasteful and inflexible. In order substantially to improve the long term sustainability of the built environment, it is necessary to develop new tools that do not simply introduce new formal complexity into the world, but intelligently and elegantly adapt to existing complexity on the construction site.

Such tools could allow designers and builders to leave some strategic details to be resolved during construction, and would make the use of low-energy, nonstandard raw and reclaimed materials in architecture once again financially and logistically feasible. This project uses machine vision and algorithmic geometry processing to generate reciprocal structures from irregularly sized reclaimed materials—thus, the form derives from the available materials, rather than from structural or aesthetic goals alone.