Arts Thread

"Designed Impermanence" is a methodological deconstruction of our built environment. Our existence is governed by craft and material hierarchies, conformed perceptions, and socioeconomic contextual drivers. Recognizing these tendencies, formats, and desires is critical to constructing propositions that re-envision alternative methods of forming future realities. Redesigning parameters in physical configurations serves as an index for visual propositions to redefine perceptions of time, adaptation, and materiality. Understanding and embedding material changes and failures into the metal facade allows for periods of mobility, rusted stagnation, and a corroded drop metamorphosis that proposes the endurance of material value rather than its decline. The nitinol wire panels have a series of profile curves associated with specific transition temperatures at 15, 30, 40, 60, and 80 degrees Celsius. As temperature increases, these profile curves begin to express themselves, shifting the form while also recognizing the post-human threshold of the design. This approach speculates on how and for whom we are designing, acknowledging the increased necessity for embedded flexibility in a time of increasing uncertainty. Through experimentation and research, these concepts are synthesized to challenge our sensemaking by building contextual linkages that illuminate how our current methodologies commingle under invisible tension through passive indicators of heat, humidity, and time. This strain and agency in formations symbolically provoke shifts in our understanding and attunement to perceptions of change by providing space for contemplation.