UK Centre for Materials Education
Working with you to enhance the student experience
Working with you to enhance the student experience
Materials and engineering programmes all involve students learning about the relationships between structure and properties of materials such as metals, ceramics, polymers and composites. However, they rarely take into account the aesthetics of use and consumer needs. On the other hand, Art and Design students develop their practical skills with different materials but rarely do they understand the properties of those materials in any depth, and therefore cannot use them to their full potential.
This symposium aims to bring together the expertise of artists, designers, materials scientists and engineers in order to encourage the disciplines to work together in enhancing the teaching and learning experience of all of their students. It aims to enable arts and design lecturers to help their students gain a better understanding of the materials that they research in design practice; and to enable materials and engineering lecturers to help their students to better understand the design process, especially aesthetics, as well as ways of visualising and representing their data. It may also be of interest to those who teach / study the science of materials in art, eg art restoration.
We hope that the symposium will lead to the development of further links between the materials, engineering and the art and design communities (particularly within HE) thereby encouraging a more balanced set of students opting to study both disciplines at degree level as well as fostering a wider creativity within the students emerging from these courses.
| 10.30 am | Coffee and Registration |
| 11.00 am | Introduction |
| 11.30 am | Christopher Rose, University of Brighton - Visualising Form |
| A short visual presentation linking material
explorations with aesthetics, interaction and knowledge; followed by a brief experimental workshop in drawing and perception in connection with design. |
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| 12.30 pm | Dr Sue Mossman, The Science Museum - 'The Materials House' |
| 12.50 pm | Lunch |
| 1.40 pm | Dr Richard Cook, City and Guilds Art School - Conservation Studies |
| 2.00 pm | David Clews - Material Space - Workshop |
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This workshop is based on a spatial modelling workshop offered to postgraduate architecture, interior design and exhibition design students. The relationship between materiality and making, use (inhabitation) and perception of space is a critical to spatial design and yet our discussion and use of materials is often limited to opposing positions of engineering vs decoration. This workshop builds on our intuitive and emotional responses to materials and material processes and sites these in relation to ideas about how materials and making have spatial consequences which, in turn influence our use and inhabitation of space. You will need nothing more than enthusiasm, a will to speculate and imagination to take part in the workshop. If you have materials (at any scale; from landscape to jewellery) then bring a sample(s) as a scan or photograph. |
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| 4.00 pm | Plenary Discussion |
| 5.00 pm | Close |