transMATERIALS
Material Driven Design in the field of tension between design and
natural science
(School of Design)
Materials research has become a key discipline in the 21st century.
For designers, material driven design methods and experimental materials research open up interdisciplinary fields of action and new challenges in dealing with materials. These become the junction and interdisciplinary scope for design and adjacent fields of competence that were originally not very much connected to design. Nowadays, materials are in complex contexts that enable new cross-connections to technology, natural science or materials research, challenge and provoke them.
The hybrid material developments go hand in hand with a fusion of different disciplines, whereby the boundaries between these are blurred and a clear separation can hardly be made out. The material itself, as a medium of transdisciplinary activity, consequently takes on a new meaningful function. The increasing interferences between design, technology, natural science and materials research, which allow design to act as a cross-sectional discipline, lead to new design methods and knowledge contexts. I would like to build on this interdisciplinary area of tension with my research. My research in design studies deals with the material driven design process in product design and the associated role of the material as a transdisciplinary medium, which immediately opens a discussion about design as a cross-sectional discipline.
In the course of the doctorate, creative-practical and scientific approaches to dealing with materiality should be linked with regard to interdisciplinary methods. The aim is to supplement and re-accentuate the debate about the interlinking of design and related knowledge competencies, transdisciplinarity as a research mode and the cross-cutting concept in design.
The practical part of the research project is about the material-oriented examination of starch-based composite materials in the field of tension between design and natural science. The experimental practical work on the material is linked to the strongly interdisciplinary interpretation of design in the sense of material design, as it is understood at the Institute for Material Design IMD at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach. The practical part of the research work takes place in cooperation with the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.
Tutors:
Prof. Dr. Markus Holzbach
Prof. Dr. Alireza Kharazipour (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)