Space/Materiality
The Elevator Pitch
Space / Materiality aims to increase students’ perceptual awareness of the world through a process that moves from conceptualization, to ideation, to prototyping, to building. It is an introduction to a variety of materials as well as the tools and facilities to manipulate and transform them. The course also considers our complex relationship to space and the way we, and other organisms inhabit it.
Official Course Description
From the Course Catalogue
Building is an act of transformation. How do we translate a thought into a thing? How do we take an idea from a flat world to a three-dimensional world? In this class you will learn the techniques of physical construction: joining, inserting, interlocking, nesting, slotting, folding, collapsing. You will also come to understand how force, resistance and gravity affect construction. Space / Materiality will look at three types of space: haptic (related to touch); inhabited (lived in or occupied space); and social and environmental (related to society and the natural world)
We embrace learning through failure, taking a trial-and-error approach to finding out about material properties. We will experiment with concepts such as malleability, weight, texture, durability, and think about ways to engage all the senses as we create three-dimensional projects. Discussion, critique, and written responses will create a class community of idea-sharing. These will help you to understand your work in historical and cultural contexts, including the social and ecological impacts of the materials you use.
How One Instructor Describes This Course
“In this course students are introduced to the material world of 3-dimensional building by way of experimentation and problem-solving. Through research into function, meaning, manufacturing practices, and issues of sustainability, students learn how to select environmentally responsible materials and tools.
While the course may appear primarily building-centric, students also gain familiarity with the dialogue between 2D systems (for example, using drawing systems) and 3D objects.“
-Micki Watanabe
Week by Week Layout and Project Examples
Student outcome example from the project, Container of the Self. Students start with an object that represents their individual interests and/or culture as subject matter to design and construct a carrying case to house it, using a combination of different materials. Students will analyze the form in three different iterations: linear, planar and volumetric studies via model making. Orthographic drawings are made of the form to plan their designs.
Haptic Space/Materiality
In the initial weeks of the course, students are introduced to the N2 wood shop and all of the different Making Center shops available to them. The first project explores ideas and methods of drawing – both free-hand as well as measured mechanical drawings (orthographic/paraline). We focus on the historical background of design throughout the project as well as research methods that help students best conceptualize it.
This first project uses the fundamental concepts of line, plane, and volume, and serves as an initiation to the challenges inherent in experimentation. Students explore various methods of making in three-dimensions with different tools and materials, enabling an investigation into the forces of tension, compression and movement.
Yunsun Lee’s Inside/Out: The Head Inhabited
Student outcome from the project, The Head Inhabited, where students made hollow plaster casts of their own heads. After making surface maps of the casts and creating paper models of their final products, students build head coverings with moving parts that conceal and reveal a part of the face. They were also required to incorporate the Fibonacci sequence in their design.
Inhabited Space/Materiality
Weeks 6-10
As the projects increase in scale and scope, students start to consider space and materiality in relation to their own lived, embodied experiences. They continue to learn new tools and techniques such as geometry; this skill is introduced alongside more complex methods of making, such as a multi-step casting process.
Elise, Lara, & Ruotan’s Coffee Seating
In this final project, students are divided into small groups to create their own community, by designing a seating structure that serves a particular moment of interaction. This group will not be based on politics, religion, ethnicity or race, but rather a community of like-minded people coming together for enjoyment of similar interests: such as-yoga, coffee, Game of Thrones, chess, Minecraft, etc.. After researching and analyzing specific behaviors in context, students create a seating structure that enables people to interact while performing the chosen task. The seating will serve either to facilitate social connection or create social barriers. The prop will be used in a documented performance and presented as a final presentation including a 2 minute video.
Social-Ecological Space / Materiality
Weeks 11-15
The third and final section of the course is a departure from the analysis of things in space. Here we move towards a multi-sensory, relational experience that considers qualities, facts, contexts, thoughts, and the influences of memory. In other words, space is not only limited to a perceptual awareness of a physical setting, but includes our own participation in a spatial experience as it unfolds in time. This overall experience of space is understood via our sense of place. A sense of place is an experience of space and materiality mediated by continuous qualitative changes that are impacted by both human and non-human factors. Students explore this through socially and ecologically constructed, performative, and event-based spaces and materiality.
What Students Take With Them When They Leave
“The knowledge and experience gained in this course are applicable to any major. The curriculum includes problem-solving, experimentation, model building, and working/thinking iteratively through sketching and drawing — these are essential skills to the development of artists and designers in every discipline. They are also necessary for further study and professional practice.”
-Micki Watanabe