Week 9 - Materiality

Manufacturing in the architecture and construction industry is rapidly advancing and changing thanks to readily available technologies. ‘The age of mechanical production, of linear processes and the strict division of labour, is rapidly collapsing around us’ [1], quotes Toshiko Mori. Such new technologies as digital modelling ‘enable the user to achieve a degree of precision that previous technologies, predicated primarily on digital drawing creation, have been unable to achieve’ [2]. Discovering new uses of already available materials are offering ‘unparalleled thinness, dynamically changing properties, and functionally gradient compositions’ [3]. With new technology and basically new materials, we are able to ‘conceptualise material interventions - particularly the technology that enables their construction, which presents a fundamental aspect in how we (re)think architecture’ [4]. Basically, ‘the effective digital exchange of information is vital to the realization of the new integrative capacity of architecture’ [5]. Expanding on the material change from the twentieth century, it is ‘now possible to materially realize complex geometric organizational ideas that were previously unattainable’ [6]. For example, ‘concrete, metal, and wood are losing their opacity’ [7]. Litracon of Hungary have recently discovered translucent concrete, challenging the ‘truth and signification of material in architecture’ [8]. Another example is decay, once ‘seen as the enemy in buildings’ [9], now being pursued by many designers in a way that sees the material properties change based on ‘direct response to external and internal stimuli’ [10]. Architecture and design have begun to see the ‘unconventional articulation of conventional materials’ [11]. This allows us to understand the object as possible forms of appearances [12]. The visual and emotional effects of the materiality change is now seen to be just as important as the structural capabilities of the building. As Juhani Pallasmaa said ‘Authentic architectural experiences derive from real or ideated bodily confrontations rather than visually observed entities… The visual image of a door is not an architectural image, for instance, whereas entering and exiting through a door are architectural experiences’ [13].

[1][3][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][13] Kolarevic, B. and K. R. Klinger (2008). Manufacturing/ Material/ Effects. Manufacturing material effects : rethinking design and making in architecture. B. Kolarevic and K. R. Klinger. New York, Routledge: 5-24.

[2]Bernstein, P. G., A. Inc and Y. University (2008). Thinking versus Making: Remediating Design Practice in the Age of Digital Representation. Manufacturing material effects : rethinking design and making in architecture. B. Kolarevic and K. R. Klinger. New York, Routledge: 61-66.

[4] Menges, A. (2011). Intergral Formation and Materialisation: Computational Form and Material Gesault. Computational design thinking AD reader. A. Menges and S. Ahlquist. Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons: 198-210.

[12] Trummer, P. (2011). Associative Design: From Type to Population. Computational design thinking AD reader. A. Menges and S. Ahlquist. Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons: 179-197.