We worked with graduate level architecture and landscape architecture students on a design-research studio at the University of Texas, Austin to develop the Mapping Materials Project. Our goal was to uncover and visualize the material, production, and cultural networks that influence the built environment of Rwanda. This initial work was collected into a series of over 200 maps. These maps included understanding import and export, education and technology, energy and natural resources, agriculture and grown materials, transportation, and  building construction typologies. In the second phase students were asked how they might leverage, intervene, or redirect these networks towards the construction of a more sustainable, just, and situated built environment. The studio culminated in an exhibition of work and an open discussion with mapmakers, academics, design practitioners, policy makers and students.