POLYMER TOWER THE FUTURE IS PLASTIC

Can a future depend on a material? Can an emerging material technology reorganize processes, protocols, economies and professions? Does an emerging material technology possess the potential to reinvent spatial, structural, aesthetic and environmental conditions in architecture?

CONSIDER A PROPOSAL FROM MIES

For Mies van der Rohe this transforming material technology was plate glass. Plate glass, in contrast to stone, concrete or masonry, renders light as reflective and refractive, rather than merely absorptive. In 1919, when Mies proposed the Glass Tower for Berlin, he understood the potential of a twenty story architecture which bounced and amplified light at an urban scale. Even further, Mies understood this tower as a prototype which reinvented the material, structural, aesthetic, environmental and spatial systems of architecture. Mies spent the next three years adjusting every curve and glass facet of the tower to optimize its performance at the scale of the city. This prototype formed the basis for his considerable glass architectures.

CONSIDER SOME ADVICE FROM MR.MCGUIRE

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
(Pool-side dialogue from the film The Graduate, 1967)

FINALLY, CONSIDER SOME ONCE FUTURE PLASTIC MATERIALS NOW

"Spectra® fiber is one of the world's strongest and lightest fibers. A bright white polyethylene, it is, pound-for-pound, ten times stronger than steel, more durable than polyester and has a specific strength that is 40 percent greater than aramid fiber".
(from Honeywell, http://www.honeywell.com/sites/sm/P)

"This coupon of Veriflex™ has a rectangular memory shape. When heated above its transition temperature, it becomes elastic and can be manipulated into different shapes and then cooled to maintain the new shape in a rigid state. When reheated above its transition temperature, it will return to its memory shape if unrestrained."
(from Cornerstone Research Group, http://www.crgrp.net/veriflex.htm)

STUDIO SUMMARY

While total polymer based architectures do not currently abound, polymers are increasingly essential to building construction. Further, polymers continue to be pursued as the backbone for lightweight, strong and dynamically responsive materials. What happens when an emerging material technology meets form, force and environmental flow? How do we derive potential forms for unprecedented structural and dynamic performance?

This architectural design studio will conduct a fifteen week interrogation of emerging polymer materials and their potential to re-systematize architecture. This studio will propose possible polymer tower prototypes and in its process participate in an on-going dialogue regarding the transformation of natural gas into polymers and polymers into architecture.

This studio is structured as a macro-micro dialogue of thinking and making between students of architecture, professional chemists, professional material engineers and market researchers. It partners with the American Plastics Council (APC), and Cornerstone Research Group (CRG), two organizations profoundly connected to the trajectory of polymer materials. The American Plastics Council is a trade organization for the plastics industry. It will contribute an understanding of polymer economy, politics and perception to our discussion. Cornerstone Research Group is a materials research firm engineering smart materials and their potential applications. CRG will consult with students on a weekly basis to discuss the application of polymer technologies.

The APC and CRG will generate a discourse with the studio helping it to fully explore the range of scales between natural matter and tower architecture. This discourse, founded on the spring '05 studio, is essential to a larger set of questions asked by this studio: In what ways can architects recast the relationship between architecture and material science? Can architecture reposition itself to involve all scales of inquiry, including the molecular and the elemental? Can a dialogue between architecture and material science result in material, spatial and structural attributes not yet imagined by either discipline?

Tower prototypes will be informed by trans-scalar design thinking or designing across scales. Because polymer engineering involves molecular design, the studio is encouraged to engage in a dialogue beyond the visible spectrum. To begin, the studio will explore structural paradigms with emerging polymer technologies through the making of multiple material samples and prototypes. The studio will continue its polymer research by searching for the protocols and procedures which define, track, extract, process, value and invent these materials. Ultimately, the studio will propose prototypes for a polymer tower. And, as Meis understood, these prototypes are essentially urban participants AND architectures which re-systematize a building's material, structural, aesthetic, environmental and spatial systems.

PROCESS NOTES

This studio will rely on an iterative process of input and output, using both digital and analog tools. The studio will use digital software, including animation tools, to simulate dynamic performance, and it will use digital fabrication tools to output molds. This studio will be messy, as it will depend on the casting of tower samples and prototypes. Finally, the studio will use the visualization lab in the ACES building as integral to its process of evaluating and presenting its research.