RESEARCH ARTICLE

Making Bibelot: Casting material research within cultural frameworks

  • Erkin Özay , 1 ,
  • Gregory Delaney 1 ,
  • Nicholas Traverse 1 ,
  • Andrew Pries 2
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  • 1. School of Architecture and Planning, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14214, USA
  • 2. Boston Valley Terra Cotta, NY 14127, USA

Received date: 09 Aug 2018

Revised date: 21 Feb 2019

Accepted date: 11 Mar 2019

Published date: 15 Jun 2019

Copyright

2019 2019 Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.on behalf of KeAi. This is an open access article under the CCBY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Abstract

Material investigations in architecture often exclude practice implications by narrowly determining the scope and limitations of research. Such limitations are necessary and warranted for open-ended inquiries undertaken in controlled conditions. Working with commercial outfits in the context of a prescribed project, on the other hand, requires a clear attitude that accounts for the agency of the manufacturer. A small design-build intervention, completed with an in-kind donation from a terra cotta manufacturer in Buffalo, NewYork, gave us the opportunity to take on such a collaborative investigation. In order to explore the potentials of terra cotta as a building material to the greatest extent, wes trategically increased the complexity of the endeavor, challenging the design and manufacturing team to address production problems in a timely manner to meet the project goals. In doing this, we relied on conceptual constructs that address specific material and institutional histories of terra cotta and the cultural context, registered as form, color, and ornamentation in the project. The paper gives a detailed account of the entire process and the working assumptions by bridging the design and manufacturing decisions in an interrelated manner.

Cite this article

Erkin Özay , Gregory Delaney , Nicholas Traverse , Andrew Pries . Making Bibelot: Casting material research within cultural frameworks[J]. Frontiers of Architectural Research, 2019 , 8(2) : 121 -135 . DOI: 10.1016/j.foar.2019.03.003

Outlines

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