New Essentialism

The lineage of architectural form has moved through a series of major transitions based upon the influence of technology and culture. The response to performance, experience, and composition has been encircled by intellectual constructs driving discourse beyond the practical to differentiate architecture from building. The result loads buildings with an overlain intention that develops a language of form emergent from a pursuit of newness.. Highly self-referential and borrowing from adjacent fields and sensibilities, architecture has evolved from techniques and methods equally valid and invalid. It is time to challenge these assumptions and reconsider methods.
‘New Essentialism: Material Architecture’ examines how architecture engages material to create effect through five critical historical precedents coupled with projective experimental design project families. Analytically unpacking the fundamental methodologies of their geometric, material, spatial, and effectual sensibilities, each threshold builds an examination that reveals the essential methods and processes of design illustrating the basis for the argument for a New Essentialism through its characteristics, its methods, and sensibilities.