{"id":3818,"date":"2026-08-22T18:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T18:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.gsd.harvard.edu\/mci\/?p=3818"},"modified":"2026-09-02T13:11:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T13:11:57","slug":"lo-que-sabe-el-barro-from-clay-to-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.gsd.harvard.edu\/mci\/lo-que-sabe-el-barro-from-clay-to-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Lo Que Sabe el Barro: From Clay to Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Lo Que Sabe el Barro: From Clay to Fire<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Andrea Martinez<\/strong> | Master in Design Studies – Publics<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Fired by heat and shaped by hand, clay carries within it the memory of the landscapes it comes from. Clay is not a traditional material but an active architectural system: a medium whose physical demands organize space, structure economic life, and shape housing futures at radically different scales. This research by MCI Fellow Andrea Martinez<\/strong> traces extraction, craft, labor, and reuse across Oaxaca, Saltillo, and Mexico City. Rather than locating rupture between artisanal and industrial practice, it proposes a material continuum<\/em>, a framework for understanding how ancestral knowledge is not lost but translated through landscapes, labor, and economies.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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