ABSTRACT
The notion of material culture relates to a culture’s explicit expression in its physical artifacts and architecture, which in turn reflect the implicit processes of their intellectual and physical production—that is the processes of design and materialization. A closer examination of the reciprocal effects these two processes have on each other is particularly relevant for architecture as a material practice, especially as the interrelation of them is about to undergo a profound change. A new material culture is emerging, and the driving force for this development is not only to be found in the material realm in and of itself, but rather in the way the physical world begins to interface differently and ever more intensely with the digital domain. A new generation of designers no longer understands the material as separate and submissive to the computational, but instead explores how computational and material formation can be synthesized in novel ways. 1 This fundamental shift in design thinking stems from the growing recognition that computation, in its broader definition, is not restricted to digital processes executed by a machine only, but also includes material processes that show the capacity to physically compute form and structure. 2 A synergetic understanding of machine computation and material computation enables architects to employ the computer to engage aspects of the material world that used to lay far outside the designer’s sense and intuition, as well as engaging materiality and materialization as truly generative drivers in design.
