MATERIAL MATERIALITY IMMATERIALITY
Material
- the relationship between the site and the surrounding district, the shape of the area, the number and order of the parts of a building, the appearance of the walls, the strength of the covering, and in short the design and construction of all the elements....
- Leon Battista Alberti.
Materiality
- Emphasized that the conscious focusing on the mechanics of vision did not automatically result in decisive and deliberate rejection of other senses before our own era of the omnipresent visual image...
- Juhani Pallasmaa.
Immateriality
- A formless phenomenon, a technological development towards lightness. a tabula rasa of a capitalist economy, a gradual loss of architecture's moral weight and certitude or a programmatic focus on actions rather than forms...
- Jonathan Hill.
The role of materiality in architecture today is to inject new awareness to re-sensualise architecture through strengthened sense of materiality and and hapticity, texture and weight density of space and materialised light. In others words, architect should promote material. especially natural material around the world to strengthen the essence of material in architectural design.
The role of immateriality in architecture today is to create indirect phenomenon which is different with materiality but including it. For a more simple explanation, immateriality will create some special or outstanding feeling to the user in those particular space. Architect creates conditions in which that decision can be made in creative way.
Materiality is predominantly more about the expression of the material properties, which is quite direct and honest in architecture. One of the father in architecture Le Corbusier, he stated that materiality in architecture is a plastic thing, it means that from what we see is what we truly seen and measured by our eyes, which make the privileging or user's sight very clear. In the articles, it also stated that 'As building lose their plasticity and their connection with the language and wisdom of the body, they will become isolated in the cool and distant realm of vision', which clearly define the importance pf materiality in architecture today.
Immateriality is predominantly more about transformation of materials. human perception, value judgement, some combination of these. In the same time, material properties is included. Immateriality can't stand alone without materiality. As I mentioned above, immateriality is more towards create an unique phenomenon, it may be more complicated than materiality in terms of indirect and it cannot only depends on material properties, we have to thing about form, quality of spaces, user's feeling, lightning, furniture, etc... much more considerable compare to materiality.
Is materiality more happening in architecture today?
or immateriality?
and what is the reason behind?
In my perspective,
both of these are happening,
it depends on building typology, building function
and architect or designer itself.
Picture at left show an hostel accomodation space design by Ar. Ng Sek San. The direct material properties as building structure and open concept ( in terms of visualization) give and straight forward feeling to the users.
Picture at left show central atrium of office building design by Ar. Zaha Hadid.
The phenomenon shows modern and high tech movement (futurism) to the users.
For the first example above, the feelings and building structure is more about friendly user feeling, which make the users feel warm, easy to approach and comfort to move inside the building, this kind of materiality design is more happening in residential, commercial and sometimes instituitional buildings.
And for the second example, the feeling and building structure is more about inspiration for users, which can always inspire to generate new ideas and improve work efficiency and create spirit for users, immateriality design is more towards working spaces, iconic building, some commercial buildings and sometimes instituitional buildings.
But still,
for all information and thinking stated above,
have to depends on the architect or designer's
idea, concept, goal and site context.
