(Im)materiality and (Other)architectures

IMMATERIAL ARCHITECTURE
Jonathan Hill
Routledge
ISBN 0-415-36342-1 (pbk)

Can architecture be regarded merely as a composite of its materials? Is a building only what it is made of, as opposed to the architect’s decisive interplay of space and volume? If the three little pigs had built invisible houses of motion-sensor laser guns, would the big bad wolf have been tricked into dashing at them, and end up pulverised into smithereens before he could even huff and puff?

Immaterial Architecture questions the material in architecture, and what are our oft-held ideas of conventional materiality. No, it does not take the stance of recycling unconventional materials in building, nor that we rethink the use of materials in the building fabric. Rather, it highlights a foreign realm of materials that, surprisingly, do make other architectures as insidiously as we strain to reject its rational.

The motivation for Hill’s text argues for materials that are not necessarily tagged a price to its per foot run. In the first of only two chapters of his book, House and Home, Hill considers the material stability and solidity of architecture through an analysis of two homes – that of architecture, and the other of architects – “identifying the safety they offer and the threats they face”. The second chapter, Hunting the Shadow, which traces the origins of the architect from the Italian Renaissance to today, is “dependent on the concept that ideas are immaterial and superior to matter”, and this approach hinges on the slippery possibilities of immaterial architectures rather than the certainties of the matter.

These departure points then lead us to the meat of the text which is the inventive and non-exhaustive Index of Immaterial Architectures. These (im)materials range from the banal, Air-conditioning / Fluorescent light / Rust, to the kooky, Compost / Nordic light / Dust. Dust, like graffiti and weather are considered the antithesis of architecture rather than its materials – these are the elements that architecture exists to control and exclude. “Dust is unavoidable and it can be an architectural material, not just the undesirable detritus of life”, suggests Hill. How does this vein of thought shift our thoughts on dust, rust, and lust as modifiers of design in this globalised world where boundaries are alarmingly blurred?

- Debbie Loo, FFW

Other reviews on Jonathan Hill on fivefootway.com >> Actions of Architecture: Architects and Creative Users.

 

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JJ is co-founder of 5ft Creatives and is currently based in New York.