Inspiring materiality: Materials, Form and Architecture - Book Review

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2004 by John Winter

MATERIALS, FORM AND ARCHITECTURE

By Richard Weston. London: Laurence King. 2003. [pounds sterling]35

I remember a NASA scientist telling me of his surprise that architects' starting point is that of materials as they are. In his world you write a performance specification for a material and ask the chemist to produce it. We are moving in that direction, but, as architects we still think of stone or timber and try to understand their nature. Richard Weston's book moves away from the traditional notion of looking at materials and describing their characteristics. Instead he explores the philosophical and intellectual loading that different architects have placed on different materials at different times.

The book is a delight. The fact that the author has taken most of the photographs himself gives an immediacy that makes the arguments easily understood. The illustrations themselves are excellent. How splendid to have the buildings we know well illustrated by pictures that we have not seen before.

Weston starts with a history of attitudes to materials, goes on to describe the Modern Movement's supposed interest in space rather than materials, then looks at materials under the headings time, use, junctions, surface, meaning and materiality. This is original stuff, and makes the book a useful counterpoise to my favourite architectural history book, Nervi's Aesthetics and Technology in Building.

The latter part of the book deals sympathetically with the buildings of the last few years. This leads to the inclusion of some buildings that I find far from sympathetic; but Weston has a generously broad approach, and although his preferences are clear, they never exclude alternative viewpoints. Architects, like myself, who find much recent work baffling, will learn to understand a great deal from this book. Materials, Form and Architecture, after all, cover most aspects of our discipline.