Operating within the landscape of new materialism and considering recent advances in the field of additive manufacturing, the thesis is proposing a novel method of designing with a new type of material that is known as functionally graded. Two of the additive manufacturing advances that are considered of radical importance and at the same time are central to the research have to do with the progressively increasing scales of the output of 3D printing, as well as with the expanding palette of materials that can now be utilised in the process. Regarding the latter, there are already various industrial research initiatives underway that explore ways that various materials can be combined in order to allow for the additive manufacturing of multi-material (otherwise known as functionally graded material) parts or whole volumes that are continuously fused together. In light of this and pre-empting this architectural-level integration and fusing of materials within one volume, the research initially outlines the anticipated impacts of the new way of building that this technology heralds. Of a total of six main anticipated changes, it then focuses on the impact that functionally graded materiality will have on how design is practiced. In this attempt to deal with the uncertainty of a material realm that is unruly and wilful, an initial criticism posed of the scant existing methods for designing with multi-materials in the computer is that they do not consider the intrinsic behaviour of materials and their natural propensity to structure themselves in space. Additionally, these models essentially follow a similarly arbitrary assignment of sub-materiality within larger multi-materials, to the hylomorphic imposition of form on matter. What is effectively proposed as a counter design technique is to computationally ‘predict’ the way materials will fuse and self-structure, with this self-arrangement being partially instigated by their physical properties. Correspondingly, this approach instigates two main objectives that will be pursued in the thesis: – The first goal, is to formulate an appropriate epistemology (also known as the epistemology of computer simulations-EOCS), which is directly linked to the use of computer simulations to design with (computational blending). This is effectively the creation of a methodological framework for the way to set out, run, and evaluate the results of the simulations. – The second goal, concerns the new design methodology proposed, in which the conventional material-less computer aided design methods are replaced by a process of constructing b-rep moulds and allowing digital materials to fuse with one another within these virtual frameworks. Drawing from a specific strand of materialist and cognitive theory (conceptual blending), the theoretical objective in effect is to demonstrate that form and material are not separate at any instance of the proposed process. The resulting original contribution of the design research is a process model that is created in an existing simulation software that can be used in a standard laptop computer in order to design with functionally graded materials. The various ‘stages’ of this model are mapped as a diagrammatic design work ow in the concluding end of the PhD, while its main parts are expanded upon extensively in corresponding chapters in the thesis.

How do architects address the ambiguity of practice, being on the one hand tasked with making buildings that perform well in terms of energy use and environmental strategy, and on the other facilitating the production of capital, through their service to ensuring that the performance of the occupants (efficiency, productivity and wellbeing) is satisfied? In this PhD by practice, I use the theoretical concept of ‘the performative’ through both the written thesis and project to interrogate the various ways in which thermal management becomes entangled with management processes. The context is specific: the workplace at a moment of convergence between smart technology with architecture; where notionally, agency is given over to autonomous environmental systems to do the right thing, and work environments that are embedded in performative-linguistic company cultures that urge their occupants to ‘do the right thing’. In other words – where machines do things with fans and boilers, and humans do things with emails, meetings, performance reviews and corporate culture. I invoke Lucy Schuman’s question ‘who is doing what to whom?’ to draw attention to the way that actions are elicited from employees through discursive and constitute organisational practices. At a point where new-build non-domestic buildings, which are specifically designed to perform environmentally well, are failing to do so- I invoke Isabelle Stengers’ ethical proposition ‘what are we busy doing?’ to ask whether architects’ actions are fundamentally compromised by this entanglement. I propose a strategy for architects to address their practice in relation to these propositions, and trace the actions as they migrate through discursive fields – sustainability, organisational management, theories of motivation, workplace politics, technological innovation, activism and resistance. The narrative of the written thesis is asynchronous, and is interconnected with the project in multiple ways, it is structured in such a way so as to introduce strategies of encountering the various discursive fields which form the context of study. The project work, on the other hand, immerses the reader directly within these fields. The database that reveals the multiple realms that embed the concepts of power, economics, desire, love, productivity and war into the architectural concerns for comfort and energy use; while the performance video places two subjects constituted by management, whose passions are put to work and situate them within a discursive environment latent with the full cultural significance of its metaphors in the workplace of the knowledge economy. The first part of the written component of the thesis opens up discussions about performance and action – which are generally applicable for the discourse of environmental performance, as mediated by the occupant and the use of technology, within the contemporary workplace. I move into the second part of the written thesis, which places the context specifically within the conceptual domain of thermal management, elaborates on the implications of taking a performance oriented approach to ‘heat’, and reveals how performance and the domain of heat converge on issues of productivity, subjectivity, and wellbeing. The two actors who perform in the video can only continuously improve their performance, every action can be subverted or appropriated, presenting the urgency for my conclusion in the written thesis, that as we, in architecture, are expected to also act entrepreneurially – the question is not how we do so subversively, or as a mode of critique. We should instead pay attention to Stengers’ and Suchman’s questions, and paying attention to what is brought about, and for whom, and focus our work on care for precarious, exhausted and hyper-active subjectivities that are produced through these actions.

The aesthetics of motorway architecture has not received attention within theoretical photographic discourse and has never been the subject of an academic photographic research project. This project begins from the understanding of the motorway as one continuous piece of architecture that crosses international boundaries on its route across Europe – an architecture so large that it cannot be perceived in its entirety. As a research-by-practice PhD, photography is used to identify and record incidents of the sublime in the route of the motorway. The photographs are produced with a large field study from the Swiss Alps to Naples, where numerous complex topographical and spatial conditions are found. This results in incidents of the sublime within its architecture when the motorway is forced to negotiate these conditions during its route. The research domain was chosen for its significance within the history of art and literature in European cultural history. Travelling in these regions was and is strongly related to the development of cultural concepts of the sublime. The questions that this research investigates are: Is it possible to make a depiction of architectural, spatial, topographical factors combined in a sublime incident? Can a methodology be defined to photograph these structures? How can photographs be made of large-scale architecture that cannot be seen or experienced in their entirety? The meaning of the term sublime has become diluted in contemporary usage, often being used inaccurately in description of something exquisite or delightful. This project revisits 18th-century formulations of this aesthetic categorisation, alongside historical travel literature, representations of landscape in painting and photography and contemporary architectural and photographic discourses. These references enable a thorough understanding of principles of aesthetic composition, resulting in the creation of a new understanding of the sublime and methodology for photographing large-scale motorway architecture. Employing a photographic aesthetic that embraces representation and post-production enhancement of Fine Art practice, the project culminates in the production of 29 photographs that form a narrative series exploring incidents of the sublime within motorway architecture between the Alps and Naples.

Under the title 'Performative Architecture', this thesis draws on theories from performance studies and phenomenology in order to look beyond humanist practices that see the body as fixed and static. This thesis addresses two questions that I will be arguing are of increasing significance to contemporary architecture: Firstly, in the context of emerging digital and digitised spaces, how does the living body interact with the surrounding environment?; and secondly, what do these changing forms of human inhabitation and movement mean for the practice of architecture? The time frame spans from the work of Oskar Schlemmer in the 1920s to contemporary built works, examining the different ways that performativity has infiltrated architectural design. The case studies are divided into architectural performances that highlight the living body, and performative drawings that explore how to bring that body into the design process. In doing so a number of emerging paradigms become apparent that find built form in contemporary architectural examples. This approach is used to describe and analyse recent projects by Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman, Diller and Scofidio and Lars Spuybroek, and to identify a common orientation through very different types of built environments. Acknowledging the change in both bodies and spaces in the Information Age, this research seeks to make room for the living body in the design of emerging, multidimensional, built environments.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-109).

The years between 1945 and the early 1980s are the most celebrated in Italy’s design history. From the rhetoric of reconstruction to the postmodern provocations of the Memphis design collective, Italy’s architects played a vital role in shaping the country’s encounter with post-war modernity. Yet as often as this story has been told, it is incomplete. Craft was vital to the realisation of post-war Italian design, and an area of intense creativity in its own right, and yet has been marginalised and excluded in design historiography.

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