Material Design – Informing Architecture by Materiality

An innovative approach at the world of material performances, operations, and strategies in architectural design

The approach of "Informing Architecture by Materiality" opens the way to an innovative use of materials in the design professions. Taking material qualities and properties such as texture, elasticity, transparency and fluidity as a point of departure, the concept described and employed here transcends the conventional definitions of building materials. Instead, the focus is on a multitude of material operations, like folding and bending, carving and cutting, weaving and knitting, mirroring and screening.
The featured design strategies and methods address established and "new" materials alike. They are applied both to the scale of the detail and the entire building. The examples comprise prototype structures as well as large building projects.
Eight chapters deal with surfaces and layers, joints and juctions, weaving and texturing, nanoscale transformations, responsiveness, the integration of ephemeral factors like wind and light as well as material collections providing professional resources. Written by renowned experts in this field, the book features many examples from international contemporary architecture.

The introductory part provides the conceptual background, while a final chapter describes consequences for pressing issues of today, like sustainability or life cycle assessment.

•     An innovative design approach to materials: a major subject in architecture today
•     With contributions by James Carpenter, Sheila Kennedy, Liat Margolis, Toshiko Mori, Nader Tehrani, Peter Yeadon, and a foreword by Erwin Viray

Thomas Schröpfer is Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Contributors to the book include James Carpenter (Principal of James Carpenter Design Associates), Sheila Kennedy (Principal of Kennedy & Violich Architecture and Professor at MIT), Toshiko Mori (Principal of Toshiko Mori Architects and Professor at Hardvard University Graduate School of Design), Liat Margolis (Landscape Architect and Professor at University of Toronto), Nader Tehrani (Principal of Office dA and Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Peter Yeadon (Principal of Decker Yeadon and Professor at Rhode Island School of Design) and Erwin Viray (Professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology).