Design Yearbook 2017

MArch Dissertations
The 10,000 word MArch dissertation offers students the opportunity to undertake a sustained enquiry into a topic of particular interest to
them and to develop their own modes of writing and presentation. Where appropriate the timing of the dissertation allows for topics explored
to inform their final thesis design project. The research has a growing profile in the School, with two public presentations taking place in
October and February, and the dissertation is now a feature of the Degree Shows in Newcastle and London.
Scales of Aggregation: Material variation in architecture
Justin Moorton
Standardisation has historically been promoted as a means of driving down manufacturing
costs and hence improving the accessibility of products through economies of scale. Yet
the materials which make our built environments are all starting to look the same, and this
flavourless homogeneity may be taking an emotional toll on the people forced to live in and
around them. A growing body of cognitive science research is revealing how oppressively dull
environs can create stress and raise blood pressure as a direct result of boredom, and how
variety can improve our quality of life. This paper looks at reasons why visual variation in
architectural materiality is a property worth examining and retaining. To do so, scale and
texture were employed as metrological frameworks for approaching the design of heterogeneous
surfaces. This concern is especially valid considering the huge technological advances in digital
fabrication of late. Multi-material printing is already possible and in the not-so-distant future
it is anticipated that we will be able to embed and weave multiple materials into complex
micro-structures specified with micron-scale precision. However, it is shown that there are
other ways of orchestrating heterogeneity, mostly involving relinquishing some for of agency
or control. The deterministic specification of variation is a much more complicated endeavour
and an interdisciplinary method of approach is outlined.
Although this dissertation quite clearly had the secondary agenda of highlighting some of the
pitfalls of material standardisation, it has ended on a positive note. Whether by cultivating
the need for craft and community participation in contemporary construction, or enabling
material variety to become ‘free’ and accessible to all, a contingency which can be made
possible through the wider availability of 3D printing, the refocusing of design energies to
include the smallest scales of material design has the potential for real political and social
traction in today’s world of every-increasing giganticism. And we do live in very exciting times:
where the material concoctions we produce may soon be as varied as our imaginations will
allow.
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