The way we perceive materiality in architecture has changed
drastically over the years, evolving from simple building materials and
decoration to ‘smart materials’ displaying dynamic function and abilities,
becoming both structure and a feature.
In Kolareivc & Klingers ‘Manufacturing/Material/Effects’ materiality, in conjunction with new
digital techniques, explores new possibilities of previously unattainable
complex geometric organizational ideas. “Furthermore, in a paradoxical way, the
new techniques and methods of digitally enabled making are reaffirming the long
forgotten notions of craft, resulting from a desire to extract intrinsic
qualities of material and deploy them for particular effect”1 These
new materials are being used in the most unexpected ways, creating new
structural designs and techniques, reversing the norm, e.g. glass used in
compression and stone in tension as shown by the work of Front Inc. and Jeanne Gang’s Marble
Curtain installation. These ‘mutations’ of materiality open up a broad
network of possibilities, combined with the digital tools available, designs
become subject to an almost sure possibility, only now limited by the imagination
and creativity of the designer.
Trummer takes a morphogenetic approach to the evolution of
these materials, in ‘Associative Design’
he states, “While variation is a key component in this, it is only realized as
a necessitated repercussion to the dynamic nature of context (environments).”2
Looking at natural and organic formations, such as population thinking in
biology, he points out how multiple organisms are virtually identical but all
evolve into their unique organism, adapted to their surroundings. Essentially,
these materials will have to withstand the means of Darwin’s Natural Selection, evolving and morphing
over the course of time, developing into greater materials that may be used in
architecture.
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