Seminar: Material, Materiality and Material Systems
Faculty: Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poleto (EcoLogicStudio)
Course Summary:
The Material Systems seminar will investigate the relationship between material, materiality and material systems in the realm of architecture. The method of investigation will involve discussion as well as digital and material experiment.
Architecture as a form of Material life
(From Systemic Architecture: Operating Manual for the Self-Organizing City by C. Pasquero, M. Poletto)
“When the matter of architecture is freed from the essentialist conception that considers it a formless entity regulated by transcendental geometric rules, forms and proportions, it suddenly acquires potential of self-organization and becomes generative. In this state matter can go far beyond the resolution of structural or constructive problems as it provides models for dealing with the complex feedback that occurs between multiple (and often contrasting) forces, like the ones operating in cities.
Our task as design explorers has been to breed these models by developing scaled material prototypes that operates as analogues computers when subjected to specific sets of structural and organizational principles, programmatic regimes and urban operational fields.”
These prototypes have been actualized in many series of projects, each exploring specific set of input parameters and actualizing in highly different urban contexts; among them the eco Machines series, prototypical architectures capable of systemic co-action with their users and within the local ecosystems”.