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Material Synergies explores the tactile and conceptual relationship between contrasting materials, focusing on concrete and silk. The investigation sought to understand how these opposing materials (one industrial and rigid, the other organic and delicate) could interact to generate new design possibilities. Silkworms were actively involved in the process, producing silk in response to a cast cement artefact that shaped and influenced their patterns of weaving. This unpredictable collaboration between living organisms and man-made matter highlighted the potential of material hybridity and the role of chance in creative practice. Rather than aiming for a fixed outcome, the project embraced openness, reflection, and the speculative potential of future material explorations.
[…] The designer’s job, by extension, is ‘to promote and enable synergy between the built and the grown, the artificial and the natural… The designer then becomes a mediator, a gardener, an alchemist operating across scales and
domains to conduct rather than construct.’
— Oxman, N.
Material Ecology