Matter: Material Processes in Architectural Production

Beginning with material, this book revolves around physical material making and design decisions that emerge from material interaction. Combining essays from both practice and academia, this book presents some of the most significant projects and thoughts on materiality from the last decade. Beautifully illustrated with a great deal of technical information throughout, it shows work, technical technique and process, and positions it within a broader theoretical intention. By assembling a range of voices, here is a multifaceted portrait of material design today. Students and design professionals alike should find in this book an essential resource for understanding this increasingly important aspect of design.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part 1: Matter Conversed Part 2: Matter Design Part 3: Matter Processes Part 4: Matter Precedent Part 5: Matter Detail Part 6: Matter Ecology Part 7: Matter Pedagogy Part 8: Matter Sensations Part 9: Matter Surface

About the Author :
Gail Peter Borden is principal of the Borden Partnership and an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Southern California. His numerous awards and publications include the Architecture League of New York Young Architects Prize; 2011 AIA Young Architect Award; an artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony; a Graham Foundation Grant; and the Borchard Fellowship. Michael Meredith is a principal in the architecture office MOS and an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Perspecta, LOG, Praxis, Domus, and Harvard Design Magazine, along with many others. The work of MOS has been widely published and received numerous awards. In 2009, MOS was awarded the PS1/MoMA Summer Pavilion.

Review :
"During the past decade a shift occurred that meant that students were often building things rather than modeling them. The first generation that took on that role have set up practices that retroactively begin to re-define education. Michael Meredith and Gail Borden have assembled many of this generation's work and give coherence to this still emerging context. This is work on material qualities and at times capabilities but perhaps more accurately it reveals a still nascent but deeply important new comfort with fabrication, construction and the complexity of material as it is embedded within a range of demands from finance to structural performance." Michael Bell, Columbia University, USA "Matter: Material Processes in Architectural Production is likely to find its way onto many desks in architecture schools; expansive and well organized, Meredith and Borden have provided a critical structure that gives the book depth that other surveys cannot manage. The compilation of case studies includes iterations and outtakes that demonstrate the intensity of the research in material theory. But the book is not simply a glimpse at what the "next generation" has been up to. The real value of Matter--the reason why the rest of us should own a copy--is that it documents the extent which digital practice is influencing mainstream practice and maps a future in which architects regain control over the process of building." Kevin Daly, Daly Genik Architects, USA