Material Synthesis Fusing The Physical And The Computational Architectural Design Vol 85 N 5 Profile 237 Achim Menges by Achim Menges 9781118878378, 111887837X instant download after payment.

Architecture has in the last decade or so taken a decidedly material turn, as has technology. With the major technology and software companies turning their attention to the Internet of Things, as data penetrates every aspect of the physical world, seemingly every consumer object is a smart device. In December 2013, Google allegedly acquired seven – also reported as eight – robotics companies; the purchase including San-Francisco-based boutique design company Bot & Dolly. In July 2014, Autodesk added innovative Brooklyn-based architecture studio The Living to its research group, well-known for its wackily ground-breaking material experimentations; having only a year previously appointed synthetic biologist Andrew Hessel an Autodesk Distinguished Researcher. It is clear that materials and material science are now firmly within the sights of technology companies’ R&D. Architects have not always lived in a material world. In fact they have done their best to remove themselves from it. As Guest-Editor Achim Menges points out in his introduction to this issue, for the last 600 or so years, since the introduction of perspective drawings and the printing press during Renaissance times, architects have, in the pursuit of design and the conceptual – and arguably social status – spurned hands-on contact with buildings and an intimate knowledge of the materials that they are made from. This is not to deny the role of materials in the creation of great works of architecture, or architects’ veneration of them for lending distinct qualities to a structure. Materials have, though, most often assumed a passive, albeit enhancing rather than a generative role. Creativity has been assigned to the design or drawing, with materials most often being specified as a result of design rather than being considered a driver of it. The vision that Menges inspires in this title of on Material Synthesis changes all that by fusing the physical and the computational. ...