Week 7 Readings

Picon explores materiality in A Different Materiality. He analyses natures materiality and how it envelopes the environment around us and thus is essential to materiality. His evaluation of the definition of materiality and its links to the First Industrial Revolution cycles back to human or natural material structure. He claims that “materiality is about the way we perceive materials, but also objects as stable persistent realities.”

Furthermore in Materials By Design he scrutinizes materiality and design scales, dimensions, and manipulation. He claims that through material evolution there has been a convergence between cutting edge projects, and neo avant garde production,
  
Picon’s article in Architecture and the Virtual: Toward a New Materiality explores the positive influences of technology and how to mechanization of society has led to a more advanced architectural age. He claims that architecture remains in its infancy and there is still a lot more to discover.

Through digitization architects are enabled to freely manipulate complex shapes and innovatively make design decisions. This means that the designer is no longer restricted and through the software can operate a range of preferences.

Picon makes references between hand drawings and CAD, and metaphorically, between walking and cars. Having the automobile represent technology he examines how once inside, the driver becomes a part of the automobile becoming mechanized himself. He claims “Rather than dematerializing the world we inhabit, the automobile has instead transformed our notion of materiality,” meaning that this technological outreach has further enriched society.

When using computers, the architect could be compared to a sculptor; working its clay and moulding a design. Technology gives the architect the freedom to manipulate static forms and geometry. They can also challenge the idea of scale i.e. parametric variations.
Picon concludes that computers have become engraved into society and has become a way of life. Unlike the automobile, computers are everywhere and ever growing as they expand their networks.

The second article explores Adams Kara Taylor (AKT) and the Optimisation Design team that focuses on the application of interactive software that provides a perception towards counter intuitive design issues. The process involves extracting the problem then developing algorithms to create pre-solutions. This software enables designers to create forms using undefined geometry.

Readings

 “Architecture and the Virtual: Toward a New Materiality,” New Technologies:// New Architectures (2004) Picon, Antoine

 “A Different Materiality,” “Material by Design,” in Digital Culture in Architecture: an Introduction for the Design Profession (2010)By Picon, Antoine 

 “Intuitive Material Distributions,” Architectureal Design by Panagiotis Michalatos, Sawako Kajima, and Adams Kara Taylor (AKT)