Thinking Through Material

Architects has always been shape their architectures by the materials. Rather than

being a neural resource, materials guide how architects think and plan about form and

movement. This essay argues that material innovation has developed an architectural

logics. It will first examine how new materials enables spatial imagination beyond the

traditional wall-based thinking and then explore how technological materials and digital

systems shifted architects toward Deconstructivism architecture. Through this change,

the essay will show that new materials generate architectural ideas.

The transformation of architectural style began in the 19th century Industrial

Revolution, when the iron appeared. Iron released architect from the strict rule of

vertical and horizontal structure. The reason is the characteristics of iron that have

compressive and tensile strength. It makes possibilities to bend or span without thick

walls. Frames could be bear the load independently. In the past, the act of building a

roof itself was against gravity. In order to build the roof and hold it up, a lot of force

was applied to the pillars and walls. In order to withstand the force, the volume and

density of the wall had no choice but to increase automatically. In the past, architects

had to use straight-angle column and beam structures to overcome these physical

limitations, and no other structures could be used. The biggest idea for architects was

limited to building roofs against gravity. However, due to the aforementioned

characteristics of the rebar, building a roof has become a simpler problem. Even with

a light frame, it can withstand more than several times the weight. Through this, the

architect's thinking has shifted beyond roofing to new architectural experiments and

attempts. The steel frame is bent. The freedom created by exceeding the physical limit,

such as increasing the mass and floating in the air, was used logically to visualize the

experience and thoughts of users. As Sigfried Giedion notes, “The wall lost its meaning

as a load-bearing element. It became a membrane, a curtain.” (Sigfried Gidion, Space,

Time and Architecture, 1941). This change makes a form from mass to frame, by

making walls optionally. The Crystal Palace is the example of freed from the past rule

by using iron. The Crystal Palace (1851) stands as one of the most transformative

structure with the use of iron. Designed by Joseph Paxton for the Great Exhibition in

London, it proved the moment when architecture was no longer bound by the weight

of stone or the permanence walls. Through the standardized iron grid, spaces for

windows were secured while the iron frame distribute and sustain its loads. The iron

columns and beams were built in factories, transported and assembled at the site.

Concrete can be said to be the material that changed architecture the most among

these three. If iron was capable of various physical changes, concrete can be seen as

applying a new law of physics. The use of curved surfaces became possible, and it

was possible to make infinitely large or small without being specified in the size of raw

materials, so it was possible to blur and redefine the boundaries of space itself. In fact,

modernism emerged as large-scale commercialization using concrete became

possible, and during this period, various morphological experiments to follow functions

occurred, and concrete made those experiments possible. Le Corbusier famously

stated, “Concrete is the material of space,” suggesting that concrete should not be

treated like stone or brick, but as a medium for shaping spatial continuity. In Villa

Savoye (1929), this idea becomes architectural language: the building is lifted on

pilotis, and the plan is freed from structural walls. As he declared, “The wall is no longer

the only way to define space.” Here, concrete does more than carry load; it makes thefloor plan float, allowing circulation to move in curves rather than in straight, walled

corridors. This logic expands further in the Ronchamp Chapel (1955), where concrete

is no longer cast into rigid frames but poured into organic formwork. Reflecting on this,

Le Corbusier remarked, “Concrete is a wonderful material. With it, we can create any

form we wish.” Unlike stone, which must be cut and stacked, concrete in Ronchamp

behaves like a sculpted mass, catching light differently at every hour. Through these

works, concrete transformed architecture from the assembly of walls into the modeling

of space and time. In this way, the new materials allowed architects to consider

completely new architectural concepts that were different from the past, and to

experience more in one space. The development of materials is accelerating, and

modern architecture has become commonplace with high-rise buildings and

asymmetrical buildings that could not have been imagined in the past to the extent

that modern architecture has defied gravity.

Not only physical materials but also technology made a decisive contribution to the

transformation of architectural thinking. If iron and concrete changed the structural

order, digital production technology and new processing systems have moved

architecture from 'the act of creating shapes' to the 'act of designing the production

method'. Iron in the 19th century liberated walls, and concrete in the 20th century made

the plane fluid, but technology in the 21st century shows that architects are no longer

designing a single form, but to dealing with 'generation rules' through algorithms,

patterns, and panel systems. From this point on, materials became a systematic

device based on processing and assembly, not the material itself, and architecture

began to change to 'process architecture' based on information, assembly, and

sequences rather than fixed mass. The transformation of architectural thinking in the21st century was realized by the digital system. In the past, the design of buildings

were all born from the hands of architects. The drawing was drawn with pen and ink,

and the shape was determined directly by the gesture of the hand. The shape was

only imagined within the range of lines that could be drawn by hand, and the structure

could only be attempted at a level that humans could directly calculate and judge.

However, after the introduction of digital technology, architects are no longer those

who 'draw' the finished shape by hand. Architects were able to create various variables

and logics with their own architectural philosophies and concepts to create forms with

only concepts. Instead of stopping philosophical and conceptual thinking in a feasible

line like in the past, it is possible to explore the extreme. Examples of these systems

include parametric systems, CNC fabrication, and panels. There is a division

algorithm, and it is a deconstructionist architecture that makes good use of it.

Deconstructionist architecture is often described as 'architectural that dismantled

forms', but in fact, the form is only the result of being implemented through digital tools

beyond the range that can be drawn by hand. Architects such as Frank Gehryand

Zaha Hadid used 3D parametric programs such as CATIA, Rhino, and Grasshopper

to create irregular shapes that were out of the existing system of straight lines and

flats. This software is not simply a tool for modeling shapes, but also works as a

'production system' that divides the curved surface into thousands of panels, converts

them into CNC machining data, and connects them in a realistic production way. In

other words, the important thing in deconstructionist architecture is not the aesthetics

of dismantling the form, but the transformation of technical thinking that dismantles the

form into ‘measureable information'. As Frank Gehry notes “My dream is to do

buildings paperless. And it can be done.” In reality, it can be seen that the attempt

beyond the experimental part was directly used. Experimenting with the calculation ofcurvature and its stability is a field where many variables are applied in reality, but it

was fully feasible if digital technology was used. The impact of digital fabrication

becomes most evident in projects such as Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

(1997). Gehry did not simply draw its fluid form by hand; instead, he used CATIA, an

aerospace engineering software, to translate a free-form digital model into thousands

of titanium panels. Each panel was algorithmically numbered and CNC-cut, turning

architecture into a process of data-driven assembly rather than manual construction.

Here, the building is not a single mass but a coded surface, generated through

parameter control and executed through fabrication scripts. A similar transformation

appears in Zaha Hadid Architects' Heydar Aliyev Center (2012). Designed using Rhino

and Grasshopper, the building rejects the traditional separation of wall, roof and

ground. Instead, it is conceived as a continuous surface, mathematically controlled

through parametric logic. This surface was then subdivided into custom panels and

fabricated by digital milling technology, proving that the identity of architecture no

longer lies in a fixed form but in the algorithm that generates it.

Architecture was not just a change in form, but also a change in thinking. And the

transition of the accident always began at the moment when new materials appeared.

The stone made the architect think of gravity and the logic of the wall, the iron made

the structure look at the system that could be assembled, and the concrete allowed

the imagination to be carved into a flowing space. Today's digital paradigm technology

has progressed further, and the architect has changed not to the person who draws

the pattern, but to the existence that designs the creation rules and processes. In this

way, the material is not a simple tool, but a 'mediate of use' that determines what the

architect can imagine. Every time a new material appears, there is a new question,and the question has been designing the future of architecture. In the end, what moved

the construction w materials will appear in the future, but as before, architects will use

them as much as possible to produce more complete buildings. as the experimental

challenge and problem-solving ability of the architects to produce new tasks and solve

those tasks.

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