This course will provide you with a practical understanding of how Materials Science, History and Art/Design are intertwined and inform each other’s path and evolution. Through this module you will develop tools for understanding historic materials, their evolution through art/design and how materials selection has guided the development of social, cultural and material life. You will conduct practical experiments on materials and gain the tools to evaluate a material’s suitability for different applications in the past and present. In these practicals, you will also explore the theories and practices of ‘bioinspiration’ as these manifest in historical material cultures and current experimental processes. By the end of the course, you will have acquired general and practice-based knowledge from craft and digital fabrication, passing through materials synthesis, to curating and conservation, all viewed through the lens of the UN sustainability development and production goals.

You will learn about the different histories of materials science and art/design and examine how they are constantly overlapping. You will develop the skills to characterize different materials and assess the production of materials knowledge. You will work both independently and with a group to explore these topics, and you will home in on your presentation and collaboration skills.

By the end of this module, you will better be able to:

Engage with intertwined histories of materials science and art/design, and use this to interpret the development and reception of materials in the past and present. This will be rooted in the partnership between Imperial College London and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Acquire the tools to understand materials-based knowledge from the past and present, and how these can be applied to current UN sustainability goals.
Develop and apply a common ‘language’ (e.g., textual, visual, material and sensorial) for reflecting different and multiple modes of learning (e.g., book-based, seminar, lab-based, practice-based).
Demonstrate a range of materials selection processes and artefact-focused analytical skills and methods (e.g., close-looking, handling, reconstruction, manipulation, repurposing, contextual research…) in order to build a convincing evidence base.
Acquire the basic skills to perform key modern characterisation techniques to analyse and differentiate materials based on their compositions and properties.
Mobilise historical knowledge, specifically histories of disciplines and processes, to evaluate how historical theories and practices impact on the production of knowledge about materials in the present day (e.g., the colonial, imperial and patriarchal underpinnings of modern disciplines, institutions, forms of production, and the potential for ‘decolonising’ disciplines, institutions and material-knowledge-based practices).

This module, rooted in the partnership between Imperial College London and the Victoria and Albert Museum, offers you the unique opportunity to understand materials and materials-based knowledge across academic disciplines, across time periods and cultural frameworks, and using a wide range of theoretical, historical and practical approaches.

The module will take place over 10 weeks. Each week will involve a two-hour face-to-face session with a member of staff in the form of a seminar, practical workshop or museum visit. This programme will be complemented by short online lectures and readings (available through the module’s online learning environment) and home-based activities.

The first week will provide an introduction to key debates and issues in materials-based knowledge and histories, including the intertwined dimensions of the histories of art, design and science. In weeks 2–8, you will develop your materials and materials-based knowledge ‘toolkit’. Each session will equip you with new methods for analysing and contextualising materials. In small groups, you will work through a series of lab-based practical sessions facilitated by scientists, designers and makers; object-focused sessions that mobilise the V&A’s collection and expertise; and student-led group work rooted in multidisciplinary teams.

This work will culminate in student-led groupwork and presentations in weeks 9 and 10. In your multidisciplinary groups, you will mobilise, apply and extend the knowledge and skills developed across the module by collaborating to produce a materials infographic and linked social media campaign. This group work will also form the basis of the group presentations in the final week.