Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

The world of materials is both vastly incomprehensible and yet necessary to hold in one’s hands. Drawing on the culinary metaphor – the ephemeral and intoxicating soufflé is the result of four simple ingredients that everyone has in their kitchen at this very moment. The key is in the handling of the materials. The same is true for the built environment, where practitioners who are skilled in the use of materials are able to conjure fantastic forms from humble and/or novel materials. Like cooking, a combination of proportion, timing, and familiarity with the ingredients all come together to ensure success; but, unlike Shigeru Ban or Jean George Vongerichten, most of us settle for off-the-shelf solutions, whether cinder blocks or frozen dinners. Our session hopes to change this. The exercise will expose participants to a wide variety of “ingredients” – materials emerging from the DIY (do it yourself) and ICS (Interactive, Connected, and Smart materials) worlds – and will invite them to investigate their properties through physical interaction. The workshop will also ask them to consider their inclusion in “recipes” that could result in new hybrid/composite materials with novel properties.