Expanding the Systematic Agencyof a Material System

Abstract

Computational design and fabrication have reached an accomplished level of ubiquity and proficiency in the field of architecture, in both academia and practice. Materiality driving structure, responsiveness, and spatial organization can be seen to evolve, in kind, with the capabilities to fabricate deeper material hierarchies. Such maturity of a procedural material-driven approach spurs a need to shift from the dictations of how to explorations of why material efficiencies, bespoke aesthetics, and performativity are critical to a particular architecture, requiring an examination of linkages between approach, techniques, and process. The material system defines a branch of architectural research utilizing bespoke computational techniques to generate performative material capacities that are inextricably linked to both internal and external forces and energies. This paper examines such a self-referential view to define an expanded ecological approach that integrates new modes of design agency and shift the material system from closed-loop relationship with site to open-ended reciprocation with human behavior. The critical need for this capacity is shown in applications of novel textile hybrid material systems—as sensorially-responsive environments for children with the neurological autism spectrum disorder—in ongoing research titled Social Sensory Architectures. Through engaging fabrication across all material scales, manners of elastic responsivity are shown, through a series of feasibility studies, to exhibit a capacity for children to become design agents in exploring the beneficial interrelationship of sensorimotor agency and social behavior. The paper intends to contribute a theoretical approach by which novel structural capacities of a material system can support a larger ecology of social and behavioral agency.