Entangled materials: rice husk, straw, and circular practices in multispecies networks

This paper investigates the emerging possibilities of rice husk and straw as building materials within evolving ecological material practices in architecture, grounded in ethnographic research conducted in Qingpu, Shanghai. Although these plant materials are often treated as residues with limited or low-value uses, their exclusion from construction reveals deeper socio-technical and ecological entanglements. Drawing on Actor- Network Theory (ANT), the study maps the political, infrastructural, and multispecies networks that shape
material reuse, highlighting the relational frictions that influence their trajectories. Set in Qingpu—a historically agricultural landscape bordering Dianshan Lake, Shanghai’s largest freshwater body—the research adopts a transcalar perspective to trace ecological and material processes, from microbial activity in soils to regional infrastructures and policy frameworks. Fieldwork, including direct observation and interviews with
farmers, reveals an interconnected set of actors: infrastructures, ecological relations, regulatory frameworks, and multispecies assemblages that currently define material possibilities. Rather than framing current
limitations as fixed barriers, the study emphasizes the dynamic potential of these entangled networks to reconfigure alliances between human and more-than-human participants. It shows how evolving infrastructures, ecological systems, regulations, and cultural perceptions of cultivated materials intersect to open experimental pathways for circular practices. ANT serves as a methodological lens to trace negotiations across human and nonhuman actors. The paper advocates repositioning rice husk and straw as active participants within socio-ecological networks and calls for a relational reconfiguration of material systems—
where circularity becomes not merely a technical goal but a situated practice of ecological care. By grounding material reuse in multispecies entanglement, the study contributes to broader discourses on ecological repair, context-specific technologies, and architectures of circular practice.