What are you main interests in relation to material research?
To answer this question I would have to go back to my own architectural internship which essentially taught me how to access and operate with information, especially material information. We customize with the materials we currently have. My graduate work gave me a chance to re-evaluate this process of architecture through emerging material technologies, emerging attitudes towards material and design, as well as emerging fabrication processes

Practice in the academic environment adds new ideas regarding process for engaging complex sets of relationships, involving ourselves in industry, and reorganizing certain things that we take for granted in design. For the past five years, I have focused on material as a starting point towards design invention. And what I have been able to do from this starting point is also involve performance , form, fabrication, and environment in conversation with material processes. My material research is then a point of origin to re-question architecture or reinvent architecture.

Could you talk about the studios you have conducted and how you think they are beneficial for architecture students?

I have taught three material studios exploring the conventional quantities and qualities of materials. The liquid/solid, weak|([ pliableand particle:-:-:-:bond studios were set up to question abstract material attributes or abstract material parameters.

For instance in the liquid/solid studio we worked with resins, rubbers, concrete, or anything that starts out in a liquid form. We explored these liquid materials as a kind of ultimate material state for customization. This observation regarding liquid materials is not new; rather it was the way we asked questions through these materials that presented new potentials for liquid materials.

The weak|([pliablestudio started with the very thin, pliable tacked on attributes of sheet materials, which are seemingly without structural capacity. Questions of sheet materials systems were explored within the context of manufactured housing.

The final studio in this series explores particle materials or units and bonds. Again this is another type of material relationship that one might take for granted. The studio asked “What is the relationship between the unit and the bond?”

In each of these three studios, the students tried to reinvent or invent a material assembly. For instance, in the particle:-:-:-:bond studio we initially asked: What is the performance of the bond? What is the performance of the unit? How can we reinvent the performance of the unit/bond?

These studios approach material in a way that involves testing, and they all involve making exactly what you say you are going to make. Students must articulate the questions they are asking of particles and bonds, sheet materials and liquid materials. And, more importantly, they must be able to clearly define an iterative process of input/output with these materials.

What materials are you exploring in your studio this semester?

The current studio, SMARTstudio, is the one that I hoped that I could conduct within the first three years of joining the School of Architecture. This semester we are affiliated with researchers outside of the architectural profession: chemists, chemical engineers, material engineers, to start a partnership at the micro level of the materials. The studio has found a working materials partner and sponsor in Cornerstone Research Group (CRG) of Dayton, Ohio. The researchers of CRG participate on a weekly basis.

SMARTstudio then explores the dynamic attributes of shape memory materials. This studio is in a completely different vein from the previous three. Here the material scientists asks the architecture student “What do you want the material to do? Our material desires are answered with “….well, we can move some molecules around and we can figure that out”. So having that level or ability to rearrange matter is astounding! We are required to understand from the very beginning of the research that we are working with materials which perform differently than conventional materials.

I believe in creating partnerships with people who can help us evolve questions. Collaboration such as this starts to develop enough energy and momentum with a specific group of professionals who can interact with the studio because they also have questions about future applications for advanced materials.

More importantly, my interests in this type of material research, or a research which starts with an engineered material, synthetic material, shape memory alloy, or shape memory polymer, must be contextualized within the profession of architecture. The studio is then a smart material studio set within the context of architecture. In this studio we can ask: How can one re-systematize architecture with smart dynamic materials that respond to environmental stimuli?

What is a shape memory alloy, shape memory polymer, etc..?

 Shape memory materials have a programmed shape and through stimulus this shape is easily transformed. If we stimulate the transformed material again and it will return to its original programmed shape. The molecular structure is then engineered to remember a form.

What is interesting is that in many instances the stimulus for transformation is currently heat. So, if I had a piece of plastic in front me it might look like a normal piece of plastic. And if I heat it I can stretch it close to 200% of its original size.

When we compare shape memory attributes to conventional material attributes we immediately recognize that as designers we possess a very rigid understanding of material elasticity. Shape memory materials are both beneficially plastic and elastic. This offers a new series of possibilities for material performance.

Regarding stimuli, I mentioned heat, but researchers are working with all different types of stimulus that could activate this type of change: magnetic fields, photon collection, and water. For the studio what is important is the ability of the material to react to the environment or environmental stimuli.

How does the interaction between the material scientists and your studio occur? Do you change the parameters mentioned above and they provide you with the resultant material?

Over the past three years I have repeatedly encountered the question, “Why would an architect want to talk to a material scientist?” There is a classic separation between these two disciplines and in conventional terms there seems to be no common ground. It is only when architects interrogate material character and material scale we can acknowledge an intersection and find common ground.

So at the beginning of SMARTstudio, we needed to put aside preconceived notions about each other’s profession and be very upfront about the types of questions we were asking and why were asking them. The first attempts to have a conversation were very interesting. A material scientist’s vocabulary is sometimes the same as ours, but the meaning is very different. For instance, in material science the words ‘spatial’ and ‘temporal’ are also used.

Yet, both professions think spatially in terms of three-dimensional matrices and structures. And, yes the material scientists are thinking at a different scale and they don’t send us a new product every time our parameters change. But, they are validating at a micro or molecular level the performance of materials at a macro or building level. Again, this type of relationship is not necessarily part of what we have come to expect regarding architectural material trajectories. In this studio we really want to understand the macro spatial functions of these materials. We are concentrating on this during the second half of the semester.

What do you think some of the time trajectories will be on some of these new emerging materials?

 I have been thinking a lot about the history of materials and how certain materials form a relationship to certain economic and industrial processes. Materials organize processes and economies in ways that we may not acknowledge. Is there room for a new material that eliminates concrete or steel for instance? When we examine conventional material industries we immediately recognize that they are tied into a series of processes involving construction and building code practices. New materials must compete with conventional materials to make their way into the architectural marketplace.

One example I can give is Aerogel. It recently found its way into architecture as an insulator. Does this material have other uses? Absolutely. Have we explored all that the lightest material on earth can do? I would say not. The interesting thing about Aerogel it that it was discovered as an accident in a lab in 1943 and it has taken this long to become of interest.

What do you hope the students are going to take from these studios? Is it the reconsideration of the process of architecture?

That is part of it, but for each student it is different. In a broad sense, I hope the students expand their material attitude, and in so doing redefine material processes within architecture. I hope students begin to understand that an alternate process for material innovation exists. And, I hope that this process will encourage students to involve a dialogue with another profession or sets of professions which are typically outside of the architect’s standard professional set.

This is for me where my work at UT ties back to how I see myself as a professional. The students are exposed to a certain type of practice that may be new to them. They engage a critical material process, which as I suggested in the beginning, contrasts the way we have conventionally interacted with materials in architecture.

I also hope the work of the SMARTstudio has future life to it. Our relationship with CRG is set up to go beyond the studio. The student’s proposals have the potential for very real architectural applications. Many of these proposals are viable and should continue.