Fabricating Plasticity: The Art and Technology of Design with Aluminium

This book argues for the value of the material prototype as a critical site of design innovation, through a series of design and architectural case studies. Illustrated by physical objects such as chairs, columns, and building façades, these full-scale material investigations reflect their designers’ deep knowledge of material, manufacturing, and geometry. The projects do not simply express how they are made, rather their designers leverage the capacities of metal forming to exert distinctive influence on the object’s expression and performance, embracing manufacturing processes as instruments of material innovation.

Organized in two parts, part one presents the material framework informing work by Arad, Newson, Heatherwick, Future Systems, Foster, OMA, Rex, Hadid and others. Seven metal forming techniques including Press Forming, Press Brake Forming, Spinning, Panel Beating, Casting, Extruding, and Superplastic Forming are presented alongside work implemented with these processes. Part two presents original design research. Thermoformed aluminum façade systems ask critical questions of The Part: Tessellation, The Mold: Tooling, The Seam, and the Finish: Post Processing, illustrating the potential of design inquiry when techniques of material production alter techniques of design. Aluminum is redefined, inheriting a plasticity which alters the intrinsic qualities of its raw production.

For students and professionals in the fields of industrial design and architecture, this book presents an optimistic role for material in the design process.

Heather Roberge is an architect and educator based in Los Angeles, California. She is the founder and principal of design practice murmur and Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA. Professor Roberge’s research and professional work investigates the spatial, structural, and atmospheric potential that digital technologies have on the theory and practice of building. Her teaching emphasizes innovative approaches to material, computation, and manufacturing to expand the formal vocabulary and spatial implications of building envelopes and assemblies.