Week Six

In studio today Rokhshid Ghaziani gave a talk on Materialism: Matter and Materiality. We discussed what materialism and materiality is and what is the impact in the design process, as well as tangible vs. intangible materiality, materiality in architecture, and the impact of multisensory experiences through different materials. We then discussed natural materials and their uses, such as rammed earth, hempcrete, and cork, and sustainability, green construction, and embodied energy of materials. Embodied energy is a calculation of all the energy that is used to produce a material or product, including mining, manufacture and transport; 

Graph obtained from Materialism: Matter and Materiality, Rokhshid Ghaziani, page 41. 

We compared different types of flooring on how environmentally friendly they were, how they are made, and how this impacts its life span. We then discussed the final principles for materials selection:

• Choose responsible suppliers who have an environmental management system (ideally with ISO14001 certification)
• Choose renewable materials if possible; otherwise non-toxic materials
• Labelling for substance identification with disposal instructions where needed for recycling
• Durability of the material
• Maintenance of eco-systems and biodiversity
• Choose the lowest embodied energy material
• Give preference to locally produced materials
• Choose materials that do not produce greenhouse gases in production
• Avoid products that are toxic to humans or which could have a negative impact on the environment. Ideally, use organic products.

I found this talk to be extremely informative, as I didn't know that, in some cases, using renewable materials such as wood may not be the best material to use in terms of its impact of the environment, and that the embodied energy of a material is an important element to take into consideration when choosing materials.

I found Alice Hume's Soil to Cloth project really interesting as I didn't know that plants such as flax, woad, madder, and even marigold could be turned into fibre for cloths. I was very fortunate to have seen Alice Hume's Interactive Weaves project in person and was able to witness myself how involved the public got with this project. 

The climate change talks have heavily impacted the way I think about materials, as a designer, I feel responsible for how I use materials, and the impact that they will have on the environment. In the future, I will be much more considerate to what materials I intend to use, I will make sure that I properly research about the material, its costs, where its coming from, and its embodied energy, and if reusing or repurposing a material is an option before choosing new materials.

I believe that the new materialism movement is a much needed movement, it is changing the way architects and designers work; stopping the competition for the "Guggenheim effect" and the short lived publicity, and changing the focus onto long term value, quality over quantity, the importance of materiality, and a general change of priorities due to the world's economy and climate change. (1) The last decade shows a lack of care for design; favouring form over function, keeping up with trends, creating a now very common style of design, that is very quickly falling out of style and, in my opinion, turned impersonal, cold, and lacks passion. New materialism will hopefully break the cycle of architects pumping out the trendy, form over function, bold designs, in favour for more thoughtful designs, that are more considerate on the function, its materiality, and its impact on our environment and the future. I hope that it also brings back the passion, intimacy, and care that architects and designers used to have before design turned into a competition.