How does architectural form and space emerge between the forest and the factory? How does matter and materiality emerge between the kitchen and the laboratory? We pose these questions in a discursive backdrop that has come to implicate the material engagements of design practices narrowly in analogies of either forest or factory, and kitchen or laboratory. Rarely do the physical and mental, prosaic and poetic, mundane and exceptional experiences of spatial and material explorations in the design fields, fit within the dualistic notions of either/or. More so, a focus on materiality in the design fields often forecloses the latent possibilities that matter, as a substance produced between the realms of forest-factory or kitchen-laboratory, could present for phenomenological explorations. Yet, the ambition of design explorations to engage the body, offering phenomenological provocations - for instance, to exist within a cloud, walk between raindrops, swim in an ocean, or run through sand dunes - essentially traverses such latent possibilities. The other register emerging in design thinking is of apparatuses of making through which new possibilities open up beyond the confines of teleological trajectories of manufacturing. In doing so, built forms essentially slide between states of matter.

States of matter is a symposium that intends to engage provocations on such latent possibilities of inhabitations between form and matter. It draws attention to the dialectical relationship between technology and phenomenology in exploring space and form as it intersects with matter and materiality. The conversations aim to open up histories of a shared technological present - to interrogate, for instance, the situatedness of craft in primordial artisanal practices; standardized production and universal culture of the factory; and, the scenographic and algorithmic logics in the digital laboratory. We delve in this series of SEA City conversations into an ‘in-between,’ not as hybrid, but as explorations into matter and material processes whose states - through their coagulation and clouding, sedimentation and decomposition, etc. - are ‘in-formation’ to shape emergent phenomenologies that could inform future design pedagogy and praxis.


speakers

16.12.22     Anubha Sood  <<
20.01.23     Oliver Tessmann
27.01.23     Manjunath BL
24.02.23     Anne Holtrop
10.03.23     Teja Gavankar
24.03.23     Tomas Garcia

on Fri., 16th Dec 2022 @ 6:30 PM IST

Between Salt and Water focuses on the study of seagrasses and ocean water collected from three oceans and studied through dyeing, weaving, and material softening processes. The primary focus of this collection of experiments is to observe how the material configures itself so as to reveal new kinds of information - more concretely, the relationship between our production processes and the natural world.


ABOUT

Sood's exploratory practice is devoted to the study of bio-materials, from bacteria and human hair to her latest, seagrasses. Her formative years were spent in India, where she witnessed the environmental and social toll exacted by the textile industry in her native home. Sood’s work critiques these current production systems while visualizing a more equitable, sustainable path forward. She sees weaving, the intuitive act of making, as a personal healing process and a catalyst to physically engage with her environment.

Sood received her M.F.A. in Fiber Art from Parsons School of Design, New York, USA.  She won The Global Design Graduate award in Sustainability 2020. Her work has been exhibited at Carpenters Workshop Gallery (New York, USA), Mana Contemporary (New Jersey, USA), and Australian Tapestry Workshop (Melbourne, AUS). Her work has been featured in iD magazine, Dezeen, Design Miami, Wallpaper, Interior Design Magazine, and more.




This is an online series. It has been partly supported by Urban Centre Mumbai.
The events are free and open to everyone across the world.