Mattaforma

Mattaforma is the recipient of the 2026 National Design Award for Emerging Designer from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum @cooperhewitt The award honors designers who have demonstrated profound talent in the early stages of their career to contribute to the future of design. Thank you to the jury, and to all of our clients and collaborators for their support over the years. 🌱

It's been a lovely semester teaching Housing Studio at Cooper Union alongside Kayla Montes de Oca, Mersiha Veledar, and Michael Maltzan. @michaelmaltzanarchitecture @mersihaveledar @schoolofarchitecture @mattaforma Thank you to our array of brilliant jurors yesterday that couldn't stay in their seats. @_galen__ @arandalasch @young_ayata @sinelindholm @tedbaab @jasonjlee @verycolorfulbeads @hanakassem.ny Guido Zuliani Most of all congratulations to this inspiring group of students who never lost momentum and whose curiosity about mass timber blossomed into individually unique and innovative ideas for New York City housing. Adelyn Loh Alkione Papanastassiou Michaela Han Chloe Short Eamon Dunbar Eli Orrok Seitaro Takai Madeline Minichetti Joonhyuk Woo Leah Alfred Leah Varghese Helena Uceda Mia Press Saam Shojaie Allison Tung Samara Bennett Sara Carothers Sarah Lam Sofie Towers Gabrielle Mayne Vasily Chumakov Zekaiya Whittington Finally, high five to the extended teaching team (!) who provided structures, building technology and environmental engineering courses: @p_mela_a @decentralized_design_lab @samuelandersonarchitects Christian Rieser

In 2022, we were asked to imagine a future city that was completely regenerative. The result was Amagaya, a vision for next-generation communities where development, agriculture, and modular construction work together as one system. Every design decision begins with a single question: what does it mean to build a place that gives back more than it takes? Amagaya takes a wide and holistic approach to sustainability, weaving together community, regeneration, local food systems, and innovative green building practice. The goal is not only to inspire the health and wellbeing of each resident, but to create a ripple effect that impacts the communities around it and beyond.

The most advanced building material on earth requires no factory, no kiln, no heat. Just pressure. The research, the technology, and the code are all catching up. Builders like Martin Rauch of Lehm Ton Erde have spent 35 years proving what the Southwest has known for a thousand years. Researcher Julian Trummer presented the Timber Earth Slab at SBE Berlin in 2023, a hybrid of rammed earth and timber now realized at scale in the Hortus office building in Switzerland. Swipe for the full story. "Each earth construction needs a good hat and a good boot, then it's really durable." — Martin Rauch, Material Worlds at MoMA, 2023

Long considered the symbolic and physical heart of any home, the hearth at Hohokam Residence takes form as a double-sided fireplace linking the dining and living rooms. The home brings the beauty of the high desert inside. Soft ochres, iron ore clay, and sunbaked terracottas, all evoking the way light shifts across Arizona’s canyons and mesas. The kitchen remains within its original mid-century footprint, preserving the home’s historic rhythm while infusing it with a palette that feels distinctly of place. Handmade clay tile, oxidized metals, and soft mineral hues echo the surrounding desert terrain, grounding the interior in the colors of Arizona’s soil, sky, and stone.

Last week we welcomed Lindsey Wikstrom, Founding Principal of @Mattaforma and 2026 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award recipient for Emerging Designer, for the latest installment of New Earth Dialogues. In conversation with @julia.gamolina of @madamearchitect , @lindsey.wikstrom shared her pioneering work at the intersection of architecture, ecology, and material innovation, grounded in the belief that the built environment can and must grow alongside the natural systems that sustain us. Drawing from her research into forest ecology and the findings of her book Designing the Forest, the dialogue explored how cities might fold the intelligence of natural ecosystems into the way we build, and made a compelling case for mass timber as a regenerative, plant-based alternative to the concrete and steel our cities have relied upon for over a century. The dialogue framed designing with timber as much more than a technical expertise, but as a vision for life more deeply connected to nature, suggesting that we are at the beginning of a new material era, one that over the next one hundred years will blossom into what we might call plant-based cities. We are grateful for the presence of everyone who joined us for this conversation, and to Lindsey and Julia. Photographer @SierraPruitt

Tilt Pavilion is both an architectural object and an educational catalyst. Conceived as part of a Pacific Northwest design-build workshop, the pavilion is the result of architecture and engineering faculty members from across the United States learning, designing, engineering, fabricating, and celebrating this new material: Cross Laminated Timber (CLT). Over the course of two days, participants transformed their understanding of mass timber, from abstract lessons into built form. The experience revealed how quickly collaboration, when paired with material immediacy, can dissolve disciplinary boundaries; and planted seeds of mass timber enthusiasm that the faculty brought back to their home institutions. The design for Tilt is derived from a single diagonal cut from corner to corner, across four CLT panels, that results in a dynamic zero-waste geometric assembly. Collaborators: Hannibal Newsom, Xijin Emma Zhang, Ziyu Jin, Christian Ayala Lopez, Akram Jawdhari, Pedram Mortazavi, Yilei Shi, Nicole Ellison, Omar Dhia Al-Hassawim, Vineeth Dharmapalan

All Weather Garden is a proposal for a series of five additions to the existing garden at Concourse House, each tied to a sensory experience. The project began with hands-on workshops designed for women and their young children, where participants explored the five senses and helped shape the architectural concepts that emerged from their own experiences and needs. In the context of a women’s shelter, access to nature and sensory engagement becomes an essential part of healing. The garden offers spaces for restoration, play, and reflection, allowing residents to reconnect with their bodies and emotions in a calm, supportive environment. Each sensory pavilion is designed to evoke presence: the sound of rain on wood, the warmth of filtered sunlight, the scent of herbs and soil. Functionally, these additions expand the shelter’s ability to host small gatherings and therapeutic programs outdoors without interruption from weather or seasonal changes. By creating a protected yet open environment, the garden reinforces the organization’s mission of safety, resilience, and renewal, turning the act of being outside into a daily ritual of care. In partnership with @designadvocates (Barker Architecture Office, Daisy Orlana, Emily Siegel, Erica Fink, Gabrielle Kupfer, Habitat Workshop, MATERIALBUREAU, Mattaforma, Kalos Eidos, Space4Architecture, Studio For, TriLox, Walter P Moore) Community Partners: Concourse House Families and Staff, C.G. Esperanza, GTN, Manhattan College, Mothers Art Crew, Luned Palmer, New York City College of Technology, Noguchi Museum, Objects of Common Interest, Pratt Institute, unCommission

Rancho Almasomos is a living landscape on high desert terrain just south of Sedona, Arizona. This is where agriculture, ecology, and hospitality intertwine. In close partnership with the client and an interdisciplinary design and engineering team, we are creating a site-wide strategy that redefines how human and ecological health are inseparable. The site strategy follows four guiding ecological approaches: preservation and conservation, keeping the land’s natural systems intact; management and protection, moderating human activity; restoration and remediation, healing past disturbance; and generation and creation, actively propagating biodiversity. These principles shape everything from road alignment to planting palettes, balancing human experience with ecological cycles. Barns, a farm stand, a group retreat, are all sited on previously disturbed ground to minimize impact. All cultivated spaces are designed to restore soil fertility, support pollinators, provide food for the local community, harvest rainwater, replenish groundwater and feed biodynamic gardens, which will transform daily operations into acts of regeneration. @ranchoalmasomos

In conjunction with the New Practices New York 2025: Voice exhibition, the AIANY New Practices Committee hosted a three-part event series, featuring the six winning firms of this year’s New Practices New York: Voice competition. A biennial competition since 2006, New Practices New York serves as New York City’s pre-eminent platform to recognize and promote new and innovative architecture and design firms. Images courtesy of New Information @newinfo.studio Photos by Scott Haven @scotthaven

In conjunction with the New Practices New York 2025: Voice exhibition, the AIANY New Practices Committee hosted a three-part event series, featuring the six winning firms of this year’s New Practices New York: Voice competition. A biennial competition since 2006, New Practices New York serves as New York City’s pre-eminent platform to recognize and promote new and innovative architecture and design firms. Images courtesy of @newinfo.studio Photos by @scotthaven

In a world urgently needing renewable materials, Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures examines mass timber’s potential to replace concrete and steel while supporting planetary survival. The book begins with a forward by Kenneth Frampton, before following wood’s journey—from stewarded seed in the forest soil to laminated wall panels, to eventual disassembly—pausing at each stage to assess the ecological, economic, and cultural forces shaping it. In this book, published by Routledge in 2023, author Lindsey Wikstrom interrogates entrenched extractive systems, explores the realities of biodiversity and carbon storage, and dismantles common myths about fire safety, structural strength, and sequestration. By revealing the complex interplay between forest health, manufacturing processes, and building design, Wikstrom proposes a species-based methodology in which designers act as choreographers of carbon. This framework reimagines architecture’s role in balancing human needs with ecosystem resilience, offering a compelling roadmap for a truly timber-based future. Drawings by @lindsey.wikstrom Forward by @kennethframptonarchitect Graphic Design by @elanaschlenker Copyediting by Madeleine Compagnon Available for purchase @headhi Link in bio