Material world.MATERIAL CONNEXION. THE GLOBAL RESOURCE OF NEW AND INNOVATIVE MATERIALS FOR ARCHITECTS, ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS By George M. Beylerian and Andrew Dent. London: Thames & Hudson. 2005. [pounds sterling]36 Do you know that sweetcorn sweetcorn n → maíz m (dulce) sweetcorn sweet n → maïs doux sweetcorn sweet n → Mais m is available in transparent bottles made from the oil of the selfsame self·same adj. Being the very same; identical. self  sameness n. corn? Or that you can buy mosaic tiles of hand-cut, discarded seashells indigenous to the Philippines? Or a decorative fibreboard fibreboardNoun a building material made of compressed wood Noun 1. fibreboard - wallboard composed of wood chips or shavings bonded together with resin and compressed into rigid sheets fiberboard, particle board made from the hulls of sunflower-seeds? Or wall-coverings made of glass beads bonded to a backing paper with an elastometric adhesive or from the skin of 'a particular kind of stingray'? If you didn't, and you are already feeling deprived, this may be the book for you. Most of the 288 pages are occupied by a glossy catalogue of hundreds of innovative materials ranging from the seriously weird Seriously Weird was a show that played on YTV in Canada. In the UK, it was shown on ITV. Introduction The show revolves around the misadventures of 3 teenagers in Draper High in upstate New York. to the manifestly useful. They are organised into seven sections--carbon-based, cement, ceramics, glass, metals, naturals and polymers--and each section begins with a brief but informative survey. The graphic style is noisy, as in many recent Thames & Hudson books, and the descriptions of the individual materials short. For the most part the authors avoid giving 'typical applications', their aim being to encourage thinking out of the box. This makes for a book that is both fascinating and frustrating, all the more so because the real 'global resource' lurking See lurk. (messaging, jargon) lurking - The activity of one of the "silent majority" in a electronic forum such as Usenet; posting occasionally or not at all but reading the group's postings regularly. behind it--referenced via a code number at the end of each product description--is the malerialconnexion.com website, an online library of materials 'voted in by a panel of senior creative professionals'. And to access that, you have to pay a $200 annual subscription. It is there, one assumes, that you will find the real information needed to assess the relevance and potential of any product. Because this is a book rather than a website, the contents are topped and tailed with some writing. The introductory essay is a rapid breeze through the work of innovative designers and artists, while at the end are responses to a 'What the gurus say' questionnaire. Most of the chosen luminaries come from the design world, but architects get a look-in. The master of computer-animated forms, Greg Lynn Greg Lynn (born 1964), is an American architect, philosopher, and science-fiction writer Life and Work Lynn graduated cum laude from Miami University (OH) with degrees in Architecture and Philosophy, and Princeton University with a Master's of Architecture. , professes an almost truth-to-materials ethic, while Zaha Hadid Zaha Hadid (Arabic: زها حديد) CBE (born October 31, 1950, Baghdad, Iraq) is a notable Iraqi-British deconstructivist architect. Biography Born october 31 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. , less surprisingly, confirms that 'the choice of a certain materiality MATERIALITY. That which is important; that which is not merely of form but of substance. 2. When a bill for discovery has been filed, for example, the defendant must answer every material fact which is charged in the bill, and the test in these cases seems to of an architectural object follows the initial architectural concept'. So elegantly put. Despite its frustrations, I am glad to have this book and am considering forking out the money to join the website. |
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