Experimentation into a new Human Agenda
MAT_er.LAB is a multi-disciplinary and experimental ‘art laboratory’ space within the faculty of Art, Design and Media where biomaterial approaches are explored to facilitate the creation of innovative substitutes for existing harmful materials. Learning processes stem from observing and working with nature within these spaces and inform the STEAM-based pedagogical format behind the proposal.
Launched in 2019, the MAT_er.LAB roots in a collaboration with the Material Design Laboratory at KEA Copenhagen School of Design and Technology through which the foundation for the student lab was built.
“How does one initiate a mind-set changing material-based exploration of ‘Future Living’ in a mere one and a half days?
We cannot think about Future Living without challenging the nature of our physical surroundings and the very way they are conceived and constructed. Sustaining a certain level of living will inevitably need to channel new approaches towards self-sustaining systems that function in a circular manner. Designers choice of materials will play an even more vital role in the light of limited resources and long surpassed material models as we enter a future where we need to question our consumption habits and the attitude to our physical world and its products. A process that Otto Scharmer described as the movement from Ego to Eco.
To facilitate this process, we, at Material Design Lab from Copenhagen School of Design and Technology, focus on a hands-on approach to explore and understand the very nature of materials before employing and applying them in appropriate contexts. This material-led process aims to ensure not only an appropriate use of respective materials but also a circular thinking about them thereby including sourcing, lifecycle and discarding – a thought chain where one thinks the product from start to end … and potential new start.
Three material choices were selected with the aim of challenging the students preconception. Based on the notions of what quality of life and health benefits can be attained from our choice of materials juxtaposed with Jay Quade’s critical exclamation that we live in the Garbocene, the ‘Age of Garbage’, we had packed Seaweed, perceived as waste on our shores, but celebrated for its richness in vitamins and minerals, workable as threads, sheets or pulp, ‘Paper pulp’ as easily accessible daily waste resource for three-dimensional forming and ‘Ingredients for Bioplastics’, which can be formulated into any number of different material constitutes substituting the use of petrochemical oil and its negative input on our environment and, in the light of current focus on microplastics, our body.”
- Anke Pasold and Mette Marko, Material Design Lab/ Copenhagen School of Design and Technology