Performative Materials in Architecture and Design - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841506494 ISBN 13: 9781841506494

Verlag: Intellect Books, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

This volume illuminates both the interaction of these technologies and the role of materiality in research, design and practice, and provides an overview of representative design projects and relevant theories.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rashida Ng and Sneha Patel are assistant professors of architecture at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Together they cofounded SEAMLab, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to research and the dissemination of design-based knowledge focused on materiality.

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Performative Materials in Architecture and Design

By Rashida Ng, Sneha Patel

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84150-649-4

Contents

Foreword Philip Beesley, 
Preface Rashida Ng and Sneha Patel, 
Introduction: Experimental Performances: Materials as Actors Rashida Ng, 
Chapter 1: Material Ontologies, 
Chapter 2: Material Elements, 
Chapter 3: Material Fabrications, 
Chapter 4: Material Behaviors, 
Chapter 5: Material Futures, 
Contributing Authors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Material Ontologies

on·tol·o·gy

• a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being

• a particular theory about the nature of being or the kind of existents

Approaching a Material History of Architecture

Jason Crow

In spite of our tendency to understand matter as being transhistorical, the materials with which we build as architects today are not the same as they were 20 centuries or even 20 years ago. The concrete of the ancient Roman Pantheon's dome is not the concrete of the Hoover dam. In this essay, I briefly introduce the historical and cultural invention of materiality in order to better understand the influence of matter within the digital project. What is a material? In contemporary architectural discourse, we interpret matter as a fixed set of quantifiable qualities. As material, matter has a strength. It has a resistance. It has a texture. It has a color. We assume that these qualities of the material in question do not change. Qualities are definitively fixed to the material. However, these qualities — the facts of the material — are a result of our own particular interpretation of the ontological status of matter. How might we understand the history of architecture differently if we approach materials as if they have a biography — as if they come into being, live, and eventually die?

Exploring the biographies of materials owes a debt to recent scholarship in the history of science such as that of Lorraine Daston (2000). "Biographies of materials" obviously borrows from her edited collection of essays, Biographies of Scientific Objects. However, one must proceed with caution following her example within an architectural context. Paraphrasing the words of Bruno Latour, any object has a series of local, instrumental, and practical networks that surround and determine how it is understood (Latour 2000: 250). In opposition to the progressive nature of scientific inquiry relative to its objects, matter in the hands of the architect always has the capacity to be treated and understood anachronistically. The inherent anachronism of architectural matter develops a tension between the two modes of scientific work on objects that Latour identifies. Discovery is an ahistorical mode of operation in which something has an eternal but unknown existence. In effect, a discovery has always been even prior to its local history. It marks a point in time at which a thing has been found despite the fact that it "had always been there." Invention is a mode of work embedded within the linear progression of a history (Latour 2000: 251–252). It forms a part of a logical progression from one thing to another. An invention will always be superseded by something new. The tension between these two modes is erased within the epistemology of scientific equipment. The biography of scientific equipment uncovers its over-determined state of being. It is an ontological state that allows the objectifying scientist to discover "with" equipment. For the scientist, facts cannot be invented. His or her facts exist outside our temporality. The ontological status of equipment thus prevents a confrontation with historical context.

The intent of suggesting biographies for materials in architecture is to reveal how these networks similarly fix our interpretation not only of equipment but also fix our interpretation of the material we put to use. Matter is mistakenly believed to not change over time. Understanding why and how materials change requires that the stories of matter be recognized and told to reveal their inherent tensions. The biographical approach to materials uncovers the most critical aspect of any given material. Matter is phenomenal. It can slap you in the face. Matter does not play by our rules. While there has been some progress made toward the type of biography mentioned above in the history of science, none of the research has taken into account the uniquely anachronistic relation of an artisan to material. Phenomena of matter receive less attention. Even within the context of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the scientist desires to elide any ontological instability of his or her devices. It is not good for scientific equipment to resist the work to be done. This attitude is simply not true of the artisan and requires a different epistemological method. Biographies of matter offer a possible approach. How to write such material histories remains, largely, an unexplored question.

Within the context of what is admittedly a prolegomena to approaching material histories in architecture, the goal of the current study is simply to introduce a mode of inquiry. The inquiry is a historical address of the ontology of matter and of the ontology of equipment as its supplement. The desire is to be able to construct a ground upon which notions about the so-called digital matters can be tested. In particular, a major shift occurs with regard to the theorization of materiality in digital projects like Gramazio and Kohler's Programmed Columns of 2009 and 2010 (Gramazio and Kohler 2009; 2010). In the spirit of the Speculative Realists, I would argue that the matter of these brick columns, in and of itself, withdraws (Harman 2005: 89–100). Despite the obvious phenomenal presence, the brick in these columns is not allowed to be. In the place of the matter with which the artisan engages, equipment has been substituted. Failing to address the shift from an ontological precedence of matter to the equipment that forms matter falls prey to Graham Harman's criticism of Heidegger's own confrontation with technology (Harman 2010: 5–13). Even Heidegger tends to gloss over the more curious status of equipment. Equipment is not, as in Heidegger's understanding of the tool, an extension of the body. Equipment is ontologically autonomous.

The concern of the gloss introduced here is metaphysical. I will take as an exemplar the ontological status of brick. A special mode of being is implied in Louis Kahn's infamous conversation with brick. When Kahn asks Brick, "What do you want?" he recognizes a desire within the brick. The recognition is an important concession to the brick. The brick is allowed to live and to be by mysteriously being filled with its own self-forming power. Kahn's seemingly mystical approach to the brick appears anachronistic. His understanding of animate matter is deeply embedded in a historical epistemology. Perhaps despite Kahn's own desires, the matter of the brick is literally alive and desires perfection for itself much like more quotidian animate beings. Kahn's anachronism reveals the supplement to the ontological status of material, where matter withdraws and is replaced by equipment. The material aporia covered over by equipment is implicit but not obvious in the work of Gramazio and Kohler. Digital materiality cannot be known without a foundation whether a ground exists or not. The history of brick, which Kahn evokes, provides insight into the grounding...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Intellect Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1841506494
• ISBN 13: 9781841506494
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 290
• Herausgeber: Ng Rashida, Patel Sneha
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland