unit-code
‘It is not enough to use brick because we like its texture and [because] it is a material full of historical references. It is not that this is bad in and of itself, but we can take much better advantage of its possibilities.’
Eladio Dieste, 2004
What makes a material ‘ordinary’? How can non-ordinary uses of material play a role in architecture and design experiments? How can the conflicts in use and design of material be considered ordinary in different situations? Do surprising outcomes in material use arise because of the ‘misuses’ of material, or must unexpected results be attributed to ‘new’ material?
Architecture of material is about engineering imagined opportunities, cooking with or without a recipe and constructing solids out of liquids. Whether designing or making, what we seek can transform everyday ideals. At the heart of a material-based practice is the commitment to stretch the bounds of experimentation and fabricate purposeful trial and error. One can argue that each material has an ideal expression based on its properties, innate qualities and ability to be. As we move further away from the naturalness of a material, do we necessarily arrive at innovative materiality? How do we measure the performance of such inventiveness without appropriate use? We are advocating not a disregard for pragmatic concerns but a closer examination of the different roles that context can play above and beyond the realms of practicality. Ordinariness is not necessarily ordinary, materiality is not materially stable.
In Research Cluster 5&6, we encourage design and making within a critical framework that is anything but ordinary. This year our projects have included a plant-based composite using corn, flax and willow, by-products from the fast fashion industry and compressed earth-based bricks. The challenge was to transform artisanal work that is difficult to scale into architecture. How can craft grow from one person making one thing at a time to a collective understanding of materials and a dialogue of give and take in construction? This shift of scales, central to our projects, is both physical and conceptual.