Materials Conference 2011
Permanent Change: How Long Does a Flexible Material Last?
George Wheeler
Director of Conservation, Historic Preservation, GSAPP, Columbia University; Chemist, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Moderator
Jan Knippers
Engineer, Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering
Craig Konyk
Adjunct Assistant Professor, GSAPP, Columbia University
Werner Preusker
Attorney, AG PVC und Umwelt e.V., Bonn
Rita Schenck
Executive Director, Institute for Environmental Research and Education
Plastics have promised deeply engineered parameters that assure material stability and described if not warranted parameters for degradation over time. Yet plastics have also often been understood to inevitably offer a component of aesthetics or stylistic change—any shape is achievable and plastics are understood to offer both tremendous flexibility but also defined limits. Are plastics different from other materials in terms of life spans in building; are they tested, documented and adhered to for safety and investment parameters in unique ways? Do the wider public or legislative bodies understand plastics well enough to gauge their safety, their uses or post-consumer potentials?
Degradation, loss of elasticity, loss of color—these are all aspects of a material's commodity value and liability determinations. What are the design limits of plastics in this realm? Is there a cleft between life span engineering and formal pliancy that one assumes with plastics? Are there long-term attributes to plastics that alter their environmental determinants; or applications and quantities of use and implementation that register in how a polymer performs in relation to public health, reuse or recycling? How do these attributes come together in plastics in ways that are unique or different from concrete, wood, metals or glass where life span and design potential are also often highly managed?
Plastics have promised a unique relationship to history—altering the life span of building components but also surprisingly engaged in keeping partner materials in new forms of duration: window gaskets suspending glazing in a differential time span; metals sustained by polymers in acrylic paints—polymers have deeply altered the relationships of given materials.
How do polymers alter the readings of permanence in building and what if any relationship exists between historical values associated with the term permanence and the performance of polymers today?
