Composite Territories: Engaging a bespoke material practice in digitally designed materials

Today, material performance is regarded as one of the richest sources of innovation. Accordingly, architecture is shifting to practices by which the computational generation of form is directly driven by material characteristics. At the same time, there is a growing technological means for the varied composition of material, an extension of the digital chain that foregrounds a new need to engage materials at multiple scales within the design process. Recognising that the process of making materials affords perspectives not available with found materials, this paper reports the design and assembly of the fibre reinforced composite structure Composite Territories, in which the property of bending is activated and varied so as to match solely through material means a desired form. This case study demonstrates how one might extend the geometric model so that it is able to engage and reconcile physical parameters that occur at different scales.