Everything falls apart, but some materials do it with a specific panache, and once design leaves paper to be built, no project is complete until it falls. As creatures subject to time, we identify with things in which we see ourselves, we identify with our mortal buildings. Alchemy used material transformation as an active metaphor for human betterment. This thesis will search for ways that the inevitable indexing of time on the built environment can be used to catalyze a broader understanding of time and our place in it. Sympathetic engagement with our environments can form rich internal narratives while also fostering collective memory. Four materials form the basis of these investigations: Cedar, Copper, Iron and Marble. For each material, chemical properties, history and mythology are invoked to describe their particular temporal nature, an understanding of how they come together and fall apart. The four material chapters of this thesis mean to return a sense of cognitive depth to our relationship with materials without resorting to symbolism.

Five ancient shipwrecks have been found in the sea off Croton, in southern Italy, each carrying a marble cargo composed of massive blocks, column shafts, and smaller artifacts. Three of them were located while surveying the seafloor with a multibeam sonar, and the remaining two with the help of divers, in the summers of 2005 and 2006. Two of the marble carriers are located in the bay of Punta Scifo and, therefore, are identified as the Punta Scifo A and Punta Scifo B shipwrecks, the remaining three take their names from the closest promontories: Punta Cicala, Capo Cimiti, and Capo Bianco. The Punta Scifo A shipwreck was chosen as the main focus of this work because it contains a unique assemblage of marble artifacts; including 13 basins, 15 stands decorated with lions’ paws, 16 column shafts, 14 blocks, 6 statue pedestals, and one statuette of Eros and Psyche. Moreover, because the original discovery dates back to 1908, and in 1915 salvors raised 150 tons of marble artifacts, much information was in danger of being lost. Consular inscriptions on the Punta Scifo A’s marble blocks and column shafts date the shipwreck to the early third century A.D. The merchantman was ca. 30 m long and 10 m wide, with a cargo of marble items weighting ca. 200 tons. The merchantman was loaded with its marble cargo in Asia Minor: all the items carried on board came from the quarries of Proconnesus and Docimium. The most likely point of departure was either Epheus or Miletus. While sailing toward the Strait of Messina, it is likely that a Grecale or Levante storm broke, and the helmsman was forced to look for shelter in the protected bay of Punta Scifo. Due to a change in wind direction a southerly Scirocco storm caused the ship to sink. Since the entire coastline south of Croton is totally unprotected to the south, there was no way for the crew to save their ship. Where the Punta Scifo A merchantman was destined remains unknown, although Rome appears to be a likely candidate.

Das Erzgebirge verfügt über beträchtliche Marmorvorkommen. Schon seit Jahrhunderten sind die Kalzit- und Dolomitmarmore als Düngemittel, später als Grundstoffe in der chemischen Industrie, in der Glasproduktion und als Zuschlagstoffe in der Baustoffindustrie begehrt. Die Monografie enthält die geologische Beschreibung von über 100 Marmorlagerstätten auf sächsischem und tschechischem Gebiet. Die Marmorvorkommen werden anhand von geologischen Übersichtskarten, Rissausschnitten, geologischen Schnitten und zahlreichen Fotos beschrieben. Schwerpunkte sind dabei die geschichtliche Entwicklung des jeweiligen Abbaus, die geologischen Verhältnisse, die bergtechnischen Bedingungen, die Verwendung des Rohstoffs und die Einflüsse des Marmorbergbaus auf die Umwelt. Die aufbereiteten Daten sind für künftige Bergbauunternehmungen von Interesse.

Habilitationsschrift--Frankfurt am Main, 1972/73. / Includes bibliographical references.

Everything falls apart, but some materials do it with a specific panache, and once design leaves paper to be built, no project is complete until it falls. As creatures subject to time, we identify with things in which we see ourselves, we identify with our mortal buildings. Alchemy used material transformation as an active metaphor for human betterment. This thesis will search for ways that the inevitable indexing of time on the built environment can be used to catalyze a broader understanding of time and our place in it. Sympathetic engagement with our environments can form rich internal narratives while also fostering collective memory. Four materials form the basis of these investigations: Cedar, Copper, Iron and Marble. For each material, chemical properties, history and mythology are invoked to describe their particular temporal nature, an understanding of how they come together and fall apart. The four material chapters of this thesis mean to return a sense of cognitive depth to our relationship with materials without resorting to symbolism.

Univ., Diss.--Perugia, 2005. / Cont. bibl. (p. 602-649) and notes.

Habilitationsschrift--Frankfurt am Main, 1972/73. / Includes bibliographical references.

Athens insists on representing white marble as the material embodiment of the city, and consequently white marble is persistently present in mythologies of the city. This thesis argues that in perpetuating these myths that make consistent appeals to idealised ‘white places’, the reciprocal and mytho-poetic relationship between marble’s materiality and the Athenian metropolis is progressively over-simplified. The result of this particular, reductive historiography is that today the contemporary opsis (architectural surface and image) of marble stimulates an emotional (pathetic) perception of the material that, by extension, fosters a marble-image of Athens that is truly pathetic. This pathos is clear if we consider the violent gestures that accompanied a series of recent anti-austerity riots in which rioters deliberately tore marble veneers from numerous modern and contemporary urban edifices. Despite the apparent senselessness of this act of dissent toward the superficiality of the current Athenian politico-economic apparatus, these actions in fact exposed the superficial manner in which the material has been employed to re-present Athens as an imaginary place. This thesis regards the perceptible absence of marble brought (inadvertently) to the surface during these riots as an opening to a deeper understanding of marble’s materiality. ‘Following’ the agency of marble’s matter, this Architecture by Design thesis presents three potential ways of re-instituting what matters in Attica’s marble. Firstly, the thesis advances a theoretical argument for the mutually constitutive relationship between marble and Athens, where obsolete illustrations and a priori dogmas regarding notions of matter and materiality, image and opsis, landscape and ecology are challenged (Vol. 1). Secondly, the thesis presents a re-presentational visual archive as an expressive essay of both marble’s opsis and of Athens’ marbleimage (Vol. 2). Thirdly, the thesis evokes the poetics of marble as discourse along with a portfolio of architectural design as it materialises a series of speculative design propositions that are placed in specific charged contexts across the broader Attic (metropolitan) landscape, and which address practices of marble concerned with the marble-image of Athens (Vol. 3). Read in conjunction (or in disjunction), these three means of re-situating marble’s materiality within its inherently aesthetic and, by extension, political ground mobilise the material’s asperity. In this way, the material’s intrinsic textures, tensions and differences are projected into the making of marble’s opsis —an opsis that in turn re-informs and enriches the making of Athens’ imageries.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T12:51:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T14:10:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Dissertacao (Mestrado) / IPEN/D / Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares - IPEN/CNEN-SP

Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T12:51:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T14:10:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / A utilização da lama residual de marmoraria em cerâmica vermelha foi colocada em prática visando à diminuição do impacto ambiental, causado tanto pelo descarte da lama como também pela quantidade de argila extraída no setor cerâmico. Foram coletadas amostras em 12 marmorarias localizadas na Grande São Paulo. No entanto, apenas as amostras de quatro foram selecionadas para serem incorporadas, levando em consideração suas características distintas. O argilito foi a matéria-prima escolhida para confecção da massa padrão de cerâmica vermelha, devido à sua grande utilização no setor. Tanto as amostras a serem incorporadas, quanto o argilito, foram caracterizados por meio de análise granulométrica, análise química por fluorescência de raios X e análise mineralógica por difração de raios X; além de análises segundo à norma NBR 10004 nas lamas. Após a caracterização das matérias-primas, foi aplicado às misturas o ensaio de plasticidade; em seguida, confeccionados corpos-de-prova com diversos teores de lama incorporada, os quais foram queimados e submetidos a ensaios tecnológicos, como resistência mecânica, absorção de água, porosidade, massa específica aparente e retração, dilatação do material seco e microscopia eletrônica de varredura. Os resultados demonstraram a viabilidade de aproveitamento destas lamas, apontando vantagens de sua utilização, porém levando em consideração algumas condições adotadas. / Dissertacao (Mestrado) / IPEN/D / Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares - IPEN/CNEN-SP