Aesthetics Recycled

John de Manincor / 2018

Housing, Heritage & Conservation
New Zealand, Australia

Aesthetics RECYCLED looks at the relationship between materials and ideas and their collective impact on environments. The study visits a number of building projects in Japan and the United States of America and interviewes some of the world’s leading architects and academics working in the area of material research and experimentation. Interviews were conducted with Kengo Kuma (Tokyo, Japan), Robert Barnstone (Pulman, USA), Professor Nader Tehrani (Boston, USA), Giuseppe Lignano (New York, USA), Dr. Mitchell Joachim (New York, USA), Lydia Kallipoliti (New York, USA), Dr Billie Faircloth (Philadelphia, USA) and Professor Andrew Freer (New Bern, USA).

A consistent view amongst this diverse group was that, whilst architects are not solely responsible for the environment and government policy is critical to the environmental agenda, design-leadership and innovation can help to minimise the adverse impacts the built environment has on resources and habitats. Another common theme was the importance of developing close collaborations with manufacturers and fabricators in evolving and implementing architectural ideas related to performance, optimisation and material flows. The research prompted further questions and the project is on-going.

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