Mara Trübenbach will defend her PhD thesis: "Material Dramaturgy. Tracing Trails of Dust in the Architectural Design Process."

Register to attend the lecture and the dissertation online
 

Programme

Trial lecture: 10:00 am

Trial lecture title: Performing Material Dramaturgy in Architectural Education: A Demonstration Lecture

Defence: 12:00 pm

 

Thesis abstract

Following the digital turn of the 1990s, architectural practices moved into a digital world, a development that was further accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this shift from analogue to digital there is a risk of losing touch with the physical, and skills that are essential for collaborating with physical materials. Widespread digitalisation requires a platform for discussion to recognise the performative potential of materials and to grasp the range of emotions they can induce. The effects generated by materials have implications for human decision-making. Ultimately, materials – as communicators, mediators and performing agents – act with our individual bodies, our memories and our subconscious, participating in a dialogue with them.

To come to a better understanding of the performative potential of materials, this research project deals with what it terms ‘the inner and outer worlds’ of humans and materials, highlighting the lack of a common language to describe their encounters. Focusing on the activities of model-making, textile design and scenography, this thesis explores a range of hidden agencies in architectural production that question the relation between human agents and the materials that make up the world around them. The thesis investigates how different understandings of materials operate in the work of human actors, especially individuals who often have a latent agency yet contribute to the process of architectural production. The aim is to understand better the ways in which interrelations and performativity feed back into architectural practice
 

Biography

Mara Trübenbach is an architectural designer and researcher with a deep interest in the intersection of design methods, materials and performativity. Having previously studied in Dusseldorf and Vienna, she graduated from the Bauhaus-University Weimar with an MSc in Architecture in 2018. Following a research residency at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation’s Bauhaus LAB 2019, in 2020 she was selected to join the international PhD training network TACK / Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing at AHO, Norway, funded by Marie Slodowska-Curie Actions.

Supervisor

Professor Tim Ainsworth Anstey

Co-supervisor

Professor Jessica Hemmings

Adjudication committee

Professor Judith Clark
Senior lecturer, PhD Andrew Filmer
Associate Professor Josina Vink