Material Explorations PDF

Introduction

In practice, most product-development processes in design and engineering start with an understanding of user or market analysis. Following this is the step of defining the issue and ideation in order to generate an interesting product. Prototyping and materializing the idea and then testing and revisiting it for defining details continue the process. Finally, implementing the idea through production and sales wraps up the procedure. Selection of materials comes at the end of the design process once the stages of identifying with the user and defining the problem and ideation have taken place. From a more theoretical perspective, the domination of this type of design process may be attributed to the theoretical and institutionalized separation between form and material, as well as the separation of modeling, analysis, and fabrication – theory and practice – which has been deeply rooted in modernist design theory and its philosophical foundation. A typical example of this way of thinking about the design process – of prioritization of form over material – can be found in the development and design of CAD programs for design development and generic geometric-driven form generation [1][2][3].

Over the past two decades, however, the interest in materials before form has grown and developed remarkably in the field of design, perhaps not only to challenge institutionalized knowledge or to submit a critique of design engineering that tends to oversimplify problems and their suggested solutions, but also to articulate global environmental concerns. In practice this means that material selection is carried out at the beginning of the process as a source of innovation in product development or that material and form generation is integrated as in computational materials, for example. Parallel to this development in the theory and practice of design is the opportunity to explore materials and discover their potential both in the development of new material as well as to check out the transformative potential of traditional materials for new design possibilities in the early phase of design processes [4][5][6].

The shift from prioritizing material over form or looking into material, structure, and form together not only suggests a shift in the order of steps in a design process, but it also presents a shift from material selection to material exploration. For example, in a form-focused design process, materials selection is an analytical procedure that occurs after a well-defined context and formalized criteria based on the use and manufacturing of a mature product has been reached. If, on the other hand, one considers materials at the beginning of a design process, the idea of discovery shares more similarities with the openness and abstract of scientific discovery in basic research – often anything but analytical – and works to find and define new possibilities that for itself may present new products, business strategies, and user needs [7][8].

While the idea of material-driven processes is not new and the publication list of theories and models is not short, this book on material explorations in design aims to jump-start your curiosities and desire to push material boundaries through fundamental research. Considerations required in this process of exploring materials design – those that will provide some direction in the research process – demand both confidence and stamina, especially in relation to persistent questions of usefulness, as one conceptualize your own approach or open up fresh thinking about alternative approaches. The number of approaches to material research presented in this book is not to be understood as a complete inventory; in fact the list could probably be longer. Methods are abundant, and these suggestions simply demonstrate the wide field of possibility for divergent thinking in materials research for new aesthetics – both functionally and expressively and in combination.

Cf.

[1] Bramston D. 2009. Material Thoughts. Lausanne: Ava Publishing.

[2] Karana, E., Barati, B., Rognoli, V., and van Der Laan, A. 2015. Material Driven Design (MDD): A Method to Design for Material Experiences. International Journal Of Design. 9(2), 35–54.

[3] Innna, A., and Lupton E. 2010. Exploring Materials: Creative Design for Every Day Objects. New York: Princenton Arquitectural Press.

[4] Pati, L. 2012. Using Material Exploration and Model-Making as an Approach for the Development of Concepts in Design Project Courses, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (EandPDE12) Design Education for Future Wellbeing, Antwerp, Belgium.

[5] Oxman, N. 2010. Material-based design computation. Cambridge: MIT. Dept. of Architecture. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/59192 [Retrieved 20190820]

[6] Swisher, K., and Ito, J. 2019. MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito on the problem with tech people who want to solve problems. Recode Decode. [Retrieved 20190715].

[7] Ashby, M., Bréchet, Y., Cebon, D., and Salvo, L. 2004. Selection Strategies for Materials and Processes, materials and design, 25, 51-67.

[8] van Bezooyen, A. 2014. Materials Driven Design. In Material Stories in Rognoli, V., Karana, E. Eds. Materials Experience: fundamentals of materials and design. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 277-286.