Materiality

Materials are imbued with meaning. They elicit memory, desire, agitation, and recognition, significantly shaping the experience of an architectural space. The sensory characteristics of a material - whether it is supple, brittle, translucent, cool, elastic, crude - and the extent to which it is manipulated evoke presence and absence weight and density, light and time. Materiality is fundamental to the vocabulary of architecture. Just as there is poetry in selecting a specific word or words to convey a certain meaning, there is poetry in choosing a specific material or materials to bring into being a certain place. Materials may have fixed qualities within mutable states; they may be raw, finished, decomposed, or fabricated. Technology amplifies mutability, creating a culture of endless signification: plastic endowed with select attributes of glass; corrugated metal differentiated by fluidity and impermanence. Our work reflects purposeful, honest material choices, giving rise to places of self-production and self-reflection.