Material Form Function

From a historical-genealogical perspective, modern culture and technology have been extensively built on passivated materials, like concrete, steel, plywood and glass. The modern passivation of our industrial materials accounts for the exhausting consumption of resources and energy – heavily contributing to the anthropogenic ecological crises of today. Against this paradigm, the interdisciplinary exploration of the inherent self-activity of (bio-)materials can be understood as a critical intervention towards novel modes of technicity and making: for the imagination of more sustainable futures and for a new culture of material.

Materials obtain their properties from their chemical composition and internal structure in relationship with their environment. The »Material Form Function« group gathers experts from Biology, Engineering, Surgery, Design, Architecture and the Humanities to explore material systems where micro- and macroscopic geometries and their associated properties interact at diverse structural levels to engender emergent (and often unexpected) behaviours or functions, can react to their context, and can evolve through time. Leaving behind the hylomorphic schema of materiality, which considers matter as a passive, acontextual, isomorphic substance, our interdisciplinary enquiry will study, contextualize and design with active materials.