PART ONE | Massive Change at the MCA

Design Economies :: Materials

We will build intelligence into materials and liberate form from matter.   

Material has traditionally been something to which design is applied. Designers found matter in our natural world and shaped it to provide utility and delight. That formal act of shaping was the design. Today, new methods in the fields of nanotechnology have rendered material as the object of design development. Aside from any designed application — material itself — endowed with superhero characteristics of strength, agility, memory, and intelligence, is the goal and the outcome of material design practice. Mere matter no longer, materials have become active carriers of meaning and program.