A Limaçon is a 4th degree curve, a higher order symmetry operation and recursive function in which the curve turns within itself, inverting its interior and exterior parameters. A crunode is a point in which this curved line intersects itself, and these points of intersection define the interdisciplinary moment of the limaçon. Masonry. Biology. Architecture. Each facet of this work is a non-autonomous crunode of the Limaçon Project – an inversion of one within another. -LKD

Lara Davis is a designer-builder who has researched and practiced discursively across the fields of architecture, botanical and biological science, and art. Lara studied installation art and theory at the NYSCC School of Art & Design at Alfred University, experimentally integrating media arts and material studies in the context of site-specific restoration efforts, while producing botanical dissections and other phenomenological investigations of natural form and material in her early studio explorations. Currently pursuing a Masters of Architecture at MIT, Lara has worked to integrate her knowledge of botanical morphology with structural masonry and architectural design research.

Lara's professional experience in stone masonry design and construction began in conjunction with her research in botany and the nomenclature of native and ornamental North American trees. As a builder, foreman, and assistant designer for Michael Veracka Landscape Design & Construction – and as an independent contractor in New York City, Cambridge and Providence – her most extensive experience is in non-structural dry-stone masonry construction (paving and retaining walls). She has since been involved in the design and production of numerous structural masonry prototypes, including several of her own unbuilt structural design projects. She has served as a masonry foreman and project manager for Kenfield Griffith and the MIT Digital Design Fabrication Group on a full scale prototype of a digitally fabricated, interlocking masonry wall (the Visual-Physical Design Grammars project). She has recently participated in the design and construction of a sandstone funicular vault and traditional basket-handle barrel vault at Stonemasonry In Context: The Artifex Workshop, hosted by the master masonry workshop Artifex Balear in Mallorca, Spain. Most recently, Lara has assisted in several masonry vault projects under the leadership of Professor John Ochsendorf and the MIT Masonry Research Group. Among these projects, she is presently serving as a project manager for Philippe Block, PhD (Block Research Group, ETH), on the research, design and fabrication of the Equilibrium y'all!! free-form unreinforced stone masonry vault, and participated in the design and construction of the low-carbon prototype Vault N51 at the MIT Museum. Some other notable professional experience includes her participation in the construction of a Digitally Fabricated House for New Orleans (designed by Professor Larry Sass and his MIT team) at the MoMA exhibition, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, and her own adaptive reuse design of The Lakeside Loft, an early 20th Century, waterfront industrial garage in Mt. Vernon, Maine.

Lara has pursued research on minimum material masonry forms (thin-shelled structures and vault design) and structural branching morphologies at the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) in Stuttgart, Germany. She has taught a course on "The Morphology of Tree Identification" for an MIT winter interim session, as well as a short seminar on the structural innovation of Brunelleschi's Florence Cathedral. The theoretical facet of this work has also led to the following research papers focused on the influence of biology in the history of the discipline of architecture (including the themes of organicism, evolutionary and developmental biology, and 'dynamic symmetry' in complex geometric design).