1 The search for new materials

Yet, as a practical matter, fine tuning and adaptation cannot become widespread unless the process of fine tuning is both economical and easy.

We need new types of materials and techniques which have the following two functionally necessary attributes of the construction process.

1. We need to be able to shape materials rapidly and carefully so that the process of shaping, which produces a wall, or a column, or an opening, easily creates living centers, and can be accompanied by thought while it is happening. In short, we need materials and techniques which re-establish building as an art.
2. We need these materials and techniques to do more than form natural, beautiful centers in a building almost by themselves. We also need the process of shaping and forming centers to be adaptable, so that subtleties of dimension can be accommodated easily and can be made cheaply.

Labor is the expensive item. Since we can no longer afford labor-intensive ways of making beautiful details because this will drive a building into being a luxury process, we need, instead, ways of achieving the two functionally necessary attributes, but by new means which are not labor-intensive.

To supplement out present-day materials, we have to find others which allow rapid shaping and adaptation, using new techniques which are machine-assisted, computer-assisted, and highly flexible so that the shaping can be controlled by human hands and human thought without massive and expensive investment of human labor.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/16 Continuous invention of new materials and techniques#