After decades of relying on metal (heavy and expensive), then plastics (lighter and cheaper, but made from petroleum), architects, designers, and artists are exploring materials they could not have dreamed up even a decade ago. “Architects are in a position now of developing and designing engineered materials,” says William Mac Donald, chair of Graduate Architecture. Designers code software and work alongside engineers— hands-on involvement that results in project-specific materials. “You’re not pulling parts off the shelf…you’re nurturing the design toward the particular performances you want.” Mac Donald believes this kind of engagement with new materials is now expected of the architecture profession, and thus of Pratt students. “You’re really inventing the way you’re approaching projects. A lot of it has to do with the opportunity provided by—to a certain degree—material innovation. That’s a great moment to occupy.” Mac Donald himself is innovating with materials at his architecture firm KOL/ MAC LLC, Architecture + Design; he describes his work as “the naturalization of the artificial and the artificialization of the natural.” His company has prototyped INVERSAbrane, designed to grow like mold 1 6 p rat tf o lio
across the surface of a building and recycle water, generate energy, insulate, resist bullets and bombs, and cleanse air. A prototype of INVERSAbrane debuted in 2005 at The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition “SAFE: Design Takes on Risk,” and in 2009 it was a finalist for an INDEX, a Danish biennial design award. “Architecture isn’t just mimicking biology, it’s regenerative, like a living organism,” says Mac Donald. “As architects, we’re really contributing to the ways in which the materials are engineered and designed, and that has fantastic potential to have enormous impact.”
Back to Basics Innovating with materials is not all about new technology; for many Pratt designers in all disciplines, innovation means going back to the basics. “The innovation on our part has been to research alternatives to previously standard
materials that are non-sustainable,” says Jon Otis, a professor in the Interior Design department at Pratt and the principal and creative director of Object Agency, an interdisciplinary design laboratory and creative think tank. “It often goes back to using natural materials.” Both at Object Agency and in Pratt classes, Otis stresses the use of materials, like aluminum, that can be recycled or reused. “It’s the educational mission of Pratt,” says Otis. He reinforces this mantra by having his students design projects for real clients, doing the most they can with small budgets and sustainable materials. Last year his students created the exhibition design for “Ethics and Aesthetics: Sustainable Fashion” at Pratt Manhattan Gallery. The wood materials were then reused for another student-designed exhibition in Tribeca. For Dragana Zoric, adjunct assistant professor in the Undergraduate
Cheaper. Lighter. More sustainable. It is a potentially pivotal moment in materials science and innovation.
Photos: michael silver (truss), Courtesy of KOL/MAC Architecture and Design LLC (INVERSAbrane)
Left: Detail of Michael Silver’s glass truss; Center-Right: Digital rendering of INVERSAbrane building skin