Kontakte – Das Jahrbuch der KIT-Fakultät für Architektur 2023

Emotive Material
Biographies
The diagram on the right, part of the project of
Rebecca Steinbach and Mirjam Dürr, shows
time-sections of the rooms in the middle wing according
to the emotional states of its occupants.
Some rooms accommodate quick emotional
transitions. Other rooms are more appropriate
for continuous emotional states.
In our current economy of waste, the remedy to
revaluate materials and change the ways we use
and dispose them, is to stop thinking anonymously
about them, but to make them come alive
by writing their biographies. In the seminars we
explored a number of elements that make up the
architecture department building of the KIT: a
door, window, roof, gutter, light, stairs, and sewage.
The research is not just about how they are
made or where they are from. We extend the research
into the value of the elements by writing a
biography. How did building techniques and
skills change over time? Who worked on these elements?
How where they assembled? Have they
been re-used and by whom? How do they feel,
smell and sound? The value of materials turns
out to be a part of a contingent cultural, economic,
social, and technical interrelationship within
the world. The materials get identity.
Through investigations – in the way Sherlock
Holmes would practice forensic science, investigate
crime scenes, or journalist follow the
money – we hope to find the clues, hidden traces,
and unexpected side-effects the stories of the elements.
We try and find the transitional moment
where the material can become something else.
Such as the transformation of plastic waste: how
a used shampoo bottle can be upcycled to become
a fantastic colourful plastic tile that adorns
facades (Pretty Plastic).
In the second seminar the research is extended
to the scale of the building of the architecture
department. In total 10 different reorderings
of the building are made – in for example
time, in feeling, sound, light and tactility. The reorderings
are represented in different graphics
and different ways of storytelling. The agency of
storytelling and graphic representation are essential
in this research.
Seminar
MA
Wintersemester 2022/23
Prof. Peter van Assche
Prof.’in Katja Hogenboom
Rebecca Steinbach & Mirjam Dürr
B Emotive Building Section
410 van Assche, Hogenboom