Micro-landscapes – Architecture Materiality as Memory

The cultural landscape generates from the interference of tangible and intangible components, and is transformed by human civilisations with the stratification of memory and knowledge evolution. Working on the cultural landscape, we can interpret its stratified topography as an intricate overlapping of signs that can be decoded, thus identifying the territory's quality and revealing the significance of a place. The identity of a place lies in the cultural traces and consists of the process. Observing the landscape through the lens of our culture is inevitable, and the landscape reflects ourselves, our traditions, and our memories. At a different scale, by observing the detail of any architectural artefact surface, we discover a micro-landscape with signs and memories of the process defining its identity. As in a cultural landscape, the micro-landscape becomes a system of permanences and mutations. Through its materiality, the evolutionary and metamorphic stratification of the micro-landscape embraces and protects the sense of memory of the cultural landscape. This study and understanding of materiality's micro-landscapes originate from the recent technological development of 3D-printed concrete (3DPC). The research investigates the potential of innovative architectural language by exploring the textures and patterns as the foundation for building a future memory. By encompassing the entire design-to-production process, the research explores the articulated micro-landscape of 3DPC residing in technological and material-related innovations as well as fabrication process redefinition. A new meaning of landscape makes its way, revealing a new integral approach to design production that gives architectural and cultural value to technological development.