Undisciplined CMU is the book that documents the second iteration of a project in which a construction is developed as part of a 2nd year undergraduate architecture studio focused on masonry. The material used is, as suggested above, the concrete masonry unit or CMU, is the single most utilized construction element in the industry besides dry wall. It is at the same time the least considered in its capacity to produce work that goes beyond its limited use as infill wall. For this studio the material is investigated as a given condition, it is inquired, analyzed formally but also culturally. It is stripped down of its capacity to only be used as seen, it is challenged to overcome its industry standard mode and was transformed into an unexpected construction after intense exploration. The resultant object is a massive concrete object that, as an architectural device, opened the possibilities of reimagining and reconsidering the banality of the most typical, and less valued material in the construction industry, by literally cutting it.
Undisciplined CMU is a research project that evidences the capacity of a work to overcome its expected disciplinary use by undoing its assumed role.

School of Architecture, College of Architecture and Design, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2015.