Materials Experience

Book excerpt: Beyond physical and performance characteristics, there are several other, often tacit, criteria that guide or influence designers’ selection of materials. These criteria, or choices, reveal more about the designer – his or her tastes, values and preferences. These are not merely abstract matters, however, but rather the very essence of a designer’s knowledge and experience that shapes and influences our world when applied in designed artifacts. Through a series of illustrated examples, this chapter explores some of the immaterial dimensions of material selection – not immaterial in the English sense of being unimportant, but rather immaterial because it deals with the intangible and deeper philosophical, social, cultural, environmental and political dimensions of material selection.