THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE DESIGN
PROLOGUE
M A T E R I A L I T Y A N D I M M A T E R I A L I T Y
Architecture today deceives the human’s eye, what you see is not necessarily what you understand, this is where materiality and immateriality play their role. Materiality holds form while immateriality is formless, materiality uses raw material while immateriality uses man-made material, materiality tries to blend in the site but immateriality tries to stand out from the site.
MATERIALITY AND IMMATERIALITY’S ROLE
The roles of materiality and immateriality play an important part in a building, by just using the human’s eye to see something is never enough in architecture. Materiality? Immateriality? It depends what is the architect trying to convey the message to the user.
I found that Malaysian architects love materiality so much it became a trend, few of the architects would be WHBCA, TETAWOWE and SEKSAN. WHBCA build a bathroom just for the orang asli, from this you could see that materiality play its role by providing what the user need. I feel that the bathroom is more to materiality and it is predominantly expression of material properties. The material that WHBCA uses are localize material such as timber, concrete and scaffolding. The purpose that WHBCA uses those materials is because she was trying to blend the bathroom to the nature and also thinking about carbon efficiency. The wall of the bathroom are hand made craft leafs by the orang asli. How would I see materiality here, we could tell that it is a toilet from far. The spaces is literal as it serve a purpose of helping orang asli’s hygienic level, but the material she use is a respect to the site. I like how she use local material and turn it to something new, from leaf to a hand made craft wall.
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg is a concert hall in the HafenCity quarter of Hamburg by Herzog & de Meuron, what you think that this building would be at first? I didn’t notice it is a concert hall until I read further on the article, immateriality already play its role in deceiving me.This immateriality is more on human perception and spatial quality, from the material it use to the space he create is very well develop, he uses man-made materials for the facade to deceive our eyes.
In the concert hall, I could sense that Herzog & de Meuron is trying to make the user to experience the concert at the maximum with using architecture and music. In my opinion, I think that the interior of the building have small spaces that are made out of new material is trying to create a layering space between humans, spaces that we cant see but we feel.
THE FOURTH TEXT
In my opinion, the fourth text will be how to mix materiality and immateriality together in a project despite its challenges. I think that materiality and immateriality have its own essence that we should use and not just follow one, people said two is better than one. Architects today are finding new materials to be used on their buildings but they can’t forget about how the material would form without the raw material, respecting raw material is also a significant quality. If we are able to use materiality and immateriality side by side, I think that the design will be timeless that humans will appreciate it always.