Something that I’ve been thinking lately is that all things have embedded knowledge/information. Every environment (interior or exterior) and each elemental part have myriad things to tell us. This is true of the physical/chemical/material environment, the social and economic environment, the broader ecological environment and so on. For instance, since our chemistry class I see that chemical formulas for compounds found in nature are eternal recipes, destined to outlive any printed or digital instructions that humankind could ever create.
As our Sustainable Interior Environments group at FIT puts together our lovely table of materials to share with the conference tomorrow, I'm looking at a long list of materials, such as the copper that is used in buildings for structural and decorative purposes.
We've learned in our materials class that each phase in the cycle of copper and other material goods— extraction, processing, distribution, transportation, disposal—has an economic, a social and an ecological dimension to it. I alternate between being intrigued and overwhelmed at the prospects and choices of exploration, and now I look at the material samples differently. I see them not only as options for structures and finishes, but as things that have their own life cycles and, in a way, their own kind of knowledge.
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