Echoes Of Future Matter

Grateful to AIA SanFrancisco for the opportunity to share the work of Gradient Matter and BuildTechVC as part of the Makers Series and to be in conversation about Echoes of Future Matter, our new collaborative project with Alexey Dubov. It was one of those evenings that reminded us why we do this work! Especially Lise de Vito’s questions, which brought us right to the heart of what we are about: the intersection of material innovation and poetic design intent - how advanced manufacturing, rooted in local context and humanity, can bridge the gap between the innovative technicalities of our profession and a narrative-based architecture and design that carries genuine emotional resonance. Thank you to the AIASF for inviting us and creating space for exactly this kind of conversation. #AIASF #gradientmatter #echoesoffuturematter #archlovers

You’re invited! 🎉 For our first MAKERS series of the year, we’re sitting down with Andrei Hakhovich (@gradientmatter ) and Alexey Dubov (@hovl ) of Echoes of Future Matter. (@echoes_of_future_matter ) They’re redefining design by blending structural architecture with advanced robotics to create “Future Matter” that moves, adapts, and challenges everything we know about construction.   ✨ Where: 140 Sutter St. (C+AD)  ✨ When: Thursday, April 30 🎟️ Link in @aiasf bio to grab your tickets! Moderated by Lise de Vito of @zack_devito_architecture   #Architecture #MakersSeries #RoboticArchitecture

On April 30th 2026, founders of EoFM Andrei and Alexey will be in conversation at the AIA San Francisco Center for Architecture + Design @aiasf as part of their MAKERS series and we’ll be talking about Echoes of Future Matter. EoFM started as a question: what happens when you put a design-build studio and a venture lens in the same room and let them think out loud together? The answer is a platform where material experimentation meets cultural storytelling, where a 3D-printed wall section and a conversation about the future of matter can coexist and inform each other. Andrei brings the spatial intelligence, the material poetics, and the architectural rigor. Alexey brings the background in construction tech, robotics, and what it takes to get radical ideas from prototype to production. Together, Echoes of Future Matter. is where we get to explore what neither of us could build alone. We’ll be in conversation with Lise de Vito @zack_devito_architecture , co-owner of Zack | de Vito Architecture, multidisciplinary artist, and the curator and moderator of the MAKERS series itself. Address: 140 Sutter Street, San Francisco AIASF April 30, 5:30–8:30 PM Open to all register at the link below Register link here in the profile

We are excited to share the latest in our series of interviews: Sofia Hagen @sofiahagendesign spoke with EoFM founders Andrei and Alexey about digital craftsmanship, material experimentation, and the poetic possibilities of computational design. Material discovery drives her process from 3D-printed sawdust developed to concrete shaped by Alpine contour lines in Austria. Each new material not only changes her design but also changes how she sees the world. The Sofia process is very intimate and synthesizes many modes of working: she hand-models every design before using technology and returns to human craft after, staining, sanding, and brushing concrete smooth like a stonemason. For her, automation is a collaborator, not a replacement. Imperfection is intentional in Sofia’s work, and process flaws become authorship. Sugar-based stools produce unpredictable pigment striping with every print. A crystalline PETG sculpture developed cracks from internal tension—and they stayed, because they told the truth of the material. The poetic emerges when you let systems be spontaneous—when algorithms are given enough freedom to surprise even their maker. That’s where digital craftsmanship lives. The further technology pushes us, the more we must return to earth—to tactility, to nature, to sustainability. Future matter echoes back to its origin. “The echo of future matter is this reciprocity: innovation demanding reconnection to the earth.” — Sofia Hagen Read the full interview on our website: [link in bio] #EchoesOfFutureMatter #DigitalCraftsmanship #3DPrinting #SustainableDesign #DigitalFabrication BiomaterialDesign ComputationalDesign

We are excited to share the second in our series of interviews: Oluseun Taiwo @big_seun_ (Solideon) @solideonusa EoFM founders Andrei and Alexey spoke with Oluseun about robotic learning, material intelligence, and how architecture tools are accelerating aerospace innovation. Steel drives his thinking today — a universal material whose supply chain touches every industry from maritime to aerospace. Rethinking it through lightweight, ergonomic design creates massive impact on both performance and cost. At Solideon, robots don’t just follow instructions — they learn. Each print builds memory through feedback loops and self-correction. Humans still anchor material science and data interpretation, but the future is clear: software will generate its own toolpaths, and speed will come from machine learning, not expert dependency. Failure is the strategy. Solideon deliberately tests boundaries, feeding robots challenging conditions to discover limits and teach them to build more like humans than machines. An unexpected insight came from hiring architects and designers instead of traditional aerospace engineers — their tools, Rhino and Grasshopper, became the foundation for software development, saving millions of dollars and a year of time. This approach culminated in a fully 3D-printed undersea vessel: bio-inspired, squid-like, 60% lighter, made from affordable aluminum. It’s proof that computational design can turn radical concepts into physical reality. “Imperfections are how you get a robotic process—‘inhuman’ by nature—to start looking like a human process. You want robots to build like humans. That only comes through learning and imperfection.”-Oluseun Taiwo Read the full interview on our website: [link in bio] #EchoesOfFutureMatter #ComputationalDesign #3DPrinting #SustainableDesign #DigitalFabrication Aibuild DesignFutures

EoFM founders Andrei and Alexey had the privilege of joining the final review for Robotic Craft, led by @negarkalantar with students from @cca_arch_div . This hands-on research course explored the intersection of robotics, materiality, and digital craft through robotic clay printing. Students dove deep into material behavior, coding for design, and robotic fabrication workflows—translating experimental concepts into precise, expressive clay-printed forms. Each project showcased new possibilities in structure, aesthetics, and performance through the marriage of traditional craft and cutting-edge technology. Thank you Negar, for the invitation and for creating such an inspiring learning environment. And congratulations to CCA Architecture students: Zahabiya Sakarwala, Sonakshi Pandey, David Rege, and Seymour Tseng on their remarkable work! 👏 #EchoesOfFutureMatter #ComputationalDesign #3DPrinting #SustainableDesign #DigitalFabrication #designfutures #ClayPrinting #MaterialExploration #DigitalCraft #Pier9 #InnovationInDesign

We are excited to share first in our series of interviews: Daghan Cam (Aibuild) EoFM founders Alexey and Andrei visited Aibuild in Silicon Valley to talk with Daghan Cam about where material meets technology and design meets nature. Key moments from the interview are: -How plastics went from «bad material» to circular economy hero — transforming ocean waste into 3D printed forms -The beautiful blur between human intention and machine artifacts — embracing the unpredictable -Learning from nature’s systems, not copying them ants, rivers, and emergent patterns -Why imperfection and process matter more than polish «Future matter is what doesn’t exist yet — but will. The echoes are ideas colliding and forming possible futures.» Daghan Cam Read the full interview on our website: [link in bio] #EchoesOfFutureMatter #ComputationalDesign #3DPrinting #SustainableDesign #DigitalFabrication #Aibuild #DesignFutures

Design linked with smart fabrication today increasingly operates through recursive feedback loops, where outcomes are not fixed in advance but emerge under current pressures—environmental, social, political, and economic. This approach shifts design and architecture from the production of static, predetermined forms toward systems that can adapt, reconfigure, and evolve over time. This principle resonates with the concept of “versioning,” first invented by SHoP Architects, where design is understood less as formal representation and more as the production of relationships. Vector-based, data-driven processes allow analysis to feed directly into design parameters, generating nonlinear and adaptive outcomes. This approach could be applied to architecture at large, which traditionally has sought to impose control by separating natural and social forces into closed systems of predicted behavior. Yet, as thermodynamic and informational systems show, higher levels of organization emerge in open states. By embedding flexibility, sensing, and adaptive potentials into geometry and fabrication, projects can maintain responsiveness to change while cultivating variation and unexpected outcomes. Control, then, is not a matter of rigid prediction but of co-control: distributed, coordinated modes that balance order with uncertainty. Architecture becomes less a static artifact and more a producer of possibilities—an environment attuned to both current pressures and future transformations Project credits in order of appearance: 1. Bjarke Ingels Group 2. SHoP Architects #architecture #design #innovation #digitalcraft #architecturalrobotics #3dprinting #designthinking #designtech #computationaldesign #naturedesign #ecodesign #sustainablefuture #materialfutures

One of the most resonant themes from our Echoes of Future Matter event was the evolving relationship between natural and synthetic materials. For too long, these two worlds were framed in opposition: the authentic vs. the artificial, the organic vs. the engineered. Now, materials no longer compete, but collaborate. What happens when we blend the tactile richness of natural matter with the precision of synthetic processes? When craft meets computation? This is where we see the emergence of a new artistic matter — one that is both expressive and performative, where form follows not just function, but emotion, story, and context. This hybrid thinking is no longer speculative — it’s visible in projects that integrate bio-materials with composites, handcraft with robotics, ancient techniques with algorithmic design. The tech toolbox is becoming rich and more accessible. It invites us to blur boundaries, to think beyond binaries, and to see design as a bridge — not a divider. At Echoes, this conversation came alive in both dialogue and the artifacts themselves — works that embodied the potential of this convergence. We founded Echoes of Future Matter to explore what this bridge can become — structurally, aesthetically, and culturally. Project credits in order of appearance: 1.Mighty Buildings 2.Gradient Matter 3.Mighty Buildings 4.Gradient Matter and CMG #architecture #design #innovation #digitalcraft #architecturalrobotics #3dprinting #designthinking #designtech #computationaldesign #naturedesign #ecodesign #sustainablefuture #materialfutures

Poetics of Form From the shifting patterns on butterfly wing to Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase form becomes a record of time and change. These patterns are simultaneously structural and environmental—speaking to both the wing’s architecture and its relationship to the its environment. Architecture reminds us that form and space are inseparable partners. The void becomes as important as the solid, the pause as significant as the note. Point, line, plane and volume—these basic elements pulse through all visual expression, whether in buildings, paintings, or digital media. Like Muybridge’s time-lapse studies, these ephemeral traces suggest not only motion but a state of becoming. Here, sequential frames collapse into a single moment of understanding—movement made visible, time compressed into form. Solid and void, presence and absence, emerge and dissolve as fluid structures blur the boundaries between figure and ground, form and context. What appears permanent reveals itself as process. The eye follows these transformations, witnessing how forms negotiate their own experience of space, light, and time. Through lightness, boldness, and abstraction, form reveals its dual nature—material and immaterial, transient yet grounded. In emptiness, we find room for the imagination to wander. Form is not fixed—it’s a living conversation between what is and what could be, existing in that liminal space. Project credits in order of appearance: 1. Faulders Studio 2. Gradient Matter 3. Gradient Matter and CMG 4. Mighty Buildings 5. Gradient Matter 6. Estudio Material #architecture #design #innovation #digitalcraft #architecturalrobotics #3dprinting #designthinking #designtech #computationaldesign #naturedesign #ecodesign #sustainablefuture #materialfutures

The built environment once spoke in the familiar languages of wood, stone, brick, iron, glass, and textiles. Today, as new tools and methods reshape how we design and build, we’re entering an era where materials themselves are co-inventors in the design process. “You have to ask the brick what it wants to be,” Louis Kahn famously said—reminding us that architecture begins with listening. We’re asking: How can we connect design poetics and narrative with material sensitivities and emergent fabrication methods. From Static to Flow Contemporary materials—bioplastics, living concrete, 3D-printed filaments—are no longer inert. They respond, adapt, and evolve, mirroring the fluid and dynamic nature of our world. Materials become elastic, reactive, ephemeral—creating a living dialogue between imagination and matter. Dynamic Coloring and multiple materials fusion 3D printing technologies now inject dye directly into printing heads, allowing for real-time, toolpath-specific color gradients. This allows embedding digital color mapping directly into the material itself—a seamless fusion of ornament, logic and emotion. The New Material Sensitivity Digital craft offers a path to reconnect human intention and material intelligence—restoring the tactile dialogue lost in industrialization. Today, human dexterity informs machines, and in turn, machines extend our ability to shape and refine matter. The craftsman isn’t returning—but is being reimagined through the lens of digital fabrication. Smart casting methods, like adaptive 3D-printed concrete formwork, now create a consistent bridge between design and realization. Materials are no longer passive. They are activated, guided, and enriched by the process of their own making. We are moving beyond materials that serve a predetermined form. Instead, form and material evolve together—architecture becomes a synthesis of mind and matter. Images credit: XtreeE @xtreee.3d #architecture #design #innovation #digitalcraft #architecturalrobotics #3dprinting #designthinking #designtech #computationaldesign #naturedesign #ecodesign #sustainablefuture #materialfutures

In addition to a fantastic conversation each our panelist brought art artifacts that embodied our discussion on digital poetics, local materials, co-invention, and material futures. Cocktail Table by Daghan Cam @daghancam Aibuild. The printed base showcases visible toolpaths that create unique light effects, while the wooden top grounds it in familiar warmth. It’s a perfect example of embracing manufacturing poetry—letting the crafting process become part of the aesthetic language. Metal Artefact by Oluseun Taiwo @solideonusa Custom metal 3D printed column pushed to reveal the novel manufacturing process. The visible toolpath from metal deposition creates an aesthetic that celebrates rather than hides the manufacturing method. Form typology optimization combined with printing process artifacts that results in something novel. Light Nexus by Andrei Hakhovich @gradientmatter A vessel is born from architectural fascination with vaults and light apertures. This hybrid piece blends manual design via physical paper mockups translated into computational model, then printed with recycled wooden filament, sanded and hand-finished with lime wash. This approach allowed to create poetic blend between order and chaos, mass and void. Vault Bench by Damaso Mayer @estudio_material Carved from natural stone, this piece is a meditation on precision, imperfection, history and nature. The vaulted section is saw-cut and rough-knocked, embracing the tool marks and material irregularities in poetic contrast to the precisely cut sides. It is a way of finding beauty in the “imperfect” and poetics in craft and material history. Wynwood Facade Study Model by Thom Faulders @fauldersstudio An architectural study model that reveals the multi-scalar process of the studio. Testing light and material effects across macro and micro scales, this model shows how architectural ideas move between studio and built reality, iterating on both scales how light, material, and perception interact. Each piece offers a valuable perspective of material futures where imperfections celebrated, design and fabrication evolve in dialogue, technology guided by narrative and intuition. #sfdesignweek