The project investigates the performative interaction between body and material tissues. The material system consists of a flexible matrix with empty cavities or channels within it — called “fluid fibre”.
The structural and aesthetic performance is activated when the articulated channels filled with responsive thermo-active liquids or gas. Following substances applied: heat gel capsules, supersaturated salt solution, compressed gas or water.
Due to its discreet organisation, the “fluid fibre” was allowed to act not only as a pre-programmed mechanical actuator which both makes apparent the duality of tensional and compression forces, and enables to integrate a thermo interaction within a material assembly, helping to redefine the material as a field of performative energy exchange. This gives an opportunity to investigate how thermodynamic principles might play a generative role in the design process: how the architecturally insignificant forces of air or fluid flow can become agents of integrative spatial and ornamental organisation.
The project aims to reflect emerging contemporary strategies of material fabrication and rediscover and bring to the surface the hidden dimensions of material existence, the spirit of matter and inactive force of life from which we got alienated during the modernistic industrial era. The project aims to perceive materials as active components that carry embedded layers of perceptual and cultural complexity. The research project try to re-evaluate technologies, in response to human perception and experience, as also to the global directive for more ecologically sustainable paradigms.
Institute for Materialdesign,
Prof. Dr. Markus Holzbach
HfG Offenbach
Tatjana Gorbachewskaja
Camilo Brau
Nicole Sanjon