ARCH 7040-004

Advanced Biomaterial Design: Design Poetics

The tradition of architecture is predicated on the firm, the stable and the permanent. Following an axiom of firmitas, architecture is conceptualised outside ideas of duration, death or obsolescence, an idealisation of design as retained in the moment of conception: ‘forever young’.

Industrialised building practice acts in support of this ideal. The standardisation of mass-produced elements with certified lifespans replaced at the moment of expiry ensures a seamless persistence of architecture. However, when transitioning into new material paradigms touched by the impermanent and belonging to dynamic lifecycles of biomass, how does architecture change?

The studio ‘Advanced Bio Material Design: Design Poetics’ asks how a rethinking of resource challenges and changes the presence of architecture, its design space and its poetics.