Design Media Electives explore advanced topics in representation, computation, visual culture, and fabrication. The content of the elective options varies from semester to semester.Section DescriptionMaterials Matter. Materials, arguably, are the most prototypical component of architecture - one which shares a complex and rich history across cultures, geographies, and environments. Materials have informed our built environment for millennia as humans have explored and domesticated the world around us. Architecture, in its form and application, has thus evolved with relation to human advancements in technology regarding our abilities to source and manipulate materials. While technology has changed over time from primitive tools, to the specialization of trades and crafts, to the industrial revolution, and even now to the digital revolution - the material world has not radically changed.As designer Neri Oxman notes, in reference to the late German architect Gottfried Semper, “By nature, and in its rite, the material practice of craft is informed by matter, its method of fabrication, and by the environment.” Often architecture prioritizes the development of form to its own detriment, perhaps most recently driven by our technological advancements in computation, simulation, and digital fabrication with hyper precision. Materials often take a back seat as bent (sometimes literally) to their will. This semester we will explore methodologies of material formulation in which provenance and experimentation is favored over fabrication in order to explore alternative outcomes. Students will utilize basic STEM based practices to examine a set of biologic, waste oriented, and/or alternative materials in order to research and document their attributes. 3D clay printers (Potterbots) will be our primary focus in experimentation and practice for fabrication, though advanced casting methods and CNC techniques may also be utilized. Documentation of this course, its work of material experiments and outcomes, will focus on methods of open source sharing, publication, and other peer-reviewed venues. Students will be encouraged to join in a global exploration and conversation of Material Matters.

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