Materiality

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Issue 42.1: Materiality centers on a critical discourse about the built environment, materials, and sustainability. It addresses tactile engagement with the natural world, craft as a record of time, the roles of ethics, history, and technology in material choices, and Indigenous fables about timber, territory, and extractivism, among other topics. Materiality is a rich, sweeping theme which can’t be contained by one literal definition. It can include the ephemeral—scent, a shadow, an echo. It can be the poetry of architecture, or a photograph that leaves a trace of a history—or obstructs it altogether. It can be a clay vessel casting an incantation, acting as both a transmitter and receiver, or the discolored patina on a handpainted cabinet after years of wear, each door a slightly different shade than the rest.