Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Once regarded a secondary consideration, in recent years, materiality has emerged as a powerful concept in architectural discourse and practice. Prompted in part by developments in digital fabrication and digital science, the impact of materiality on design and practice is being widely reassessed and reimagined.

Materiality and Architecture extends architectural thinking beyond the confines of current design literatures to explore conceptions of materiality across the field of architecture. Fourteen international contributors use elucidate the problems and possibilities of materiality-based approaches in architecture from interdisciplinary perspectives. The book includes contributions from the professions of architecture, art, architectural history, theory and philosophy, including essays from Gernot Böhme, Jonathan Hill and Philip Ursprung.

Important 'immaterial' aspects such as presentation, agency, ecology and concept are examined, deepening our understanding of materiality's role in architectural processes, the production of cultural identities, the pursuit of political agendas, and the staging of everyday environments and atmospheres. In-depth illustrated case studies examine works by Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, and Lacaton & Vassal, interspersed with visual essays and interviews with architects such as MVRDV providing a direct connection to practice. Materiality and Architecture is an important read for researchers and students with an interest in architectural theory and related fields such as art, art history, or visual and cultural studies.　

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of illustrations (p. ix)
• Acknowledgements (p. xvii)
• Notes on contributors (p. xix)
• Materiality and Architecture: introductory remarks (p. 1)
• Part I Presentation (p. 11)
• 1 Exposures: Herzog & de Meuron and photography (p. 13)
• 2 "Materials-in-fact": material aesthetics and ethics in Lacaton & Vassal's Palais de Tokyo (p. 27)
• 3 Material splendour: a contribution to the critique of aesthetic economy (p. 47)
• 4 Materiality matters - if only for the look of it! (p. 59)
• Part II Agency (p. 79)
• 5 Material antagonism: art, law and architecture in Santiago Sierra's work (p. 81)
• 6 Historical materialism: the fabric of communist Yugoslavia's architectural aspirations (p. 99)
• 7 Material economy and aesthetic resistance: three concrete shells by Ulrich Mütber on Rügen Island (p. 117)
• Part III Ecology (p. 127)
• 8 The immaterial and the material: an architectural dialogue in time (p. 129)
• 9 Playing with fragments of modernity: materiality, colour and light in the work of Melanie Smith (p. 148)
• 10 Self-organisation and theoretical reflection: the (im)material architecture of Venice and the Venice Hospital (p. 162)
• 11 Baubotanik: designing with living material (p. 182)
• Part IV Concepts (p. 193)
• 12 Bauspiel as immaterial investigation: avant-garde experiments with generative architectural models (p. 195)
• 13 Recuperative architectonics: matter, memory, immanence (p. 213)
• 14 MVRDV: pragmatic takes on materiality (p. 232)
• Index (p. 244)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This timely collection will be particularly useful to readers interested in the increasingly popular topic of materiality. Loschke (Univ. of Syndey, Australia) has brought together essays that underscore the many different ways contemporary scholars and architects invoke materiality. As she points out in the introduction, there is no single understanding of the term materiality, nor is the volume intended as a comprehensive treatment of materiality as it pertains to architecture. Loschke structures the book in four thematic parts: "Presentation," "Agency," "Ecology," and "Concepts." Each section includes three or four essays that address specific moments, which range geographically as well as temporally. This range is welcome because it adds important historical and cultural context to the discussion. Readers will encounter Socrates, Leon Battista Alberti, John Ruskin, and Reyner Banham along with architectural firms Herzog & de Meuron and Lacaton & Vassal and artist Santiago Sierra; case studies range from an 18th-century water house and concrete shells on the Baltic coast to interviews with contemporary architects and architectural firms (Melanie Smith, MVRDV). Each essay includes a bibliography for further reading. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --Marie Frank, University of Massachusetts Lowell