Title:
Matter, Materialization, and Biomaterial Futures
Matter, Materialization, and Biomaterial Futures
Author(s)
Tish, Daniel
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Collections
Supplementary to
Abstract
The material landscape of architecture is shifting. Architects are increasingly engaging in material systems design, no longer relying on mere specifications to address the materialization of architectural form. All the while, the climate crisis demands that the field develop new solutions to reduce energy consumption and forces us to reckon with the carbon footprint of the materials that make up our built environment. As a result, designers are often developing materials that are bio-based, utilize waste feedstocks, or water-based formulations to keep carbon costs to a minimum. By stepping away from industrialized materials, material behaviors, such as warping, shrinking, and curling, have re-entered the fabrication process and must be contended with. Furthermore, living materials disrupt any notion of determinism or “specification” and instead must be cared for and catered to guide the organisms towards desirable outcomes. New methods for robotic fabrication suggest ways that material realities may be fed back onto the design process, enabling new material expressions, and suggesting a shared design agency through adaptive construction methods. These developments defy the hylomorphic hierarchies of form and matter that have been present in architectural production since the Renaissance. Here, we will investigate how novel biomaterial systems are challenging existing practices of materialization and the nature of matter in architectural design.
Sponsor
Date Issued
2023-03
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Proceedings