Materiality and Project

Within architecture, both project process and finished work can be enriched with its own materiality. For example, if material is chosen at the beginning of the work conception process, the following design process can explore and enhance the material properties and thus improve the final result. Also, we architects can optimise our project taking into account the techniques and building processes of the materials that will make it a reality. Even these material aspects can have a more active role by influencing the decision making during design.

In this sense, this course aims to deepen in how architectural works can draw on the chromatic, light, mechanical, tactile, thermal properties, etc., of each material. And also go into detail on how the work can be improved from considering its own technique and construction. This improving process will consider technical aspects as well as economic, environmental and social.

Among the different materials available to us architects, this course will focus on rediscovering the possibilities of traditional, commonly used and more experimental materials. There will be short lectures, exercises, workshops and possibly visits. These activities will cover different design strategies from detailing, modelling and building real-size prototypes. So we will resume the work that our ancestors did in this sense and their vernacular construction, but with a reinvented goal: to move towards a more sustainable architecture for a better future of our society.