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Papers
61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Agential Realism in Architecture: Exploring Matter and Meaning
ClearRe-Use Aesthetics and the Architectural Roots of Ecological Crisis
This paper explores the architectural roots of ecological aesthetics and reuse culture, arguing that adaptive reuse of materials including plastic waste has historical precedent in architecture that can inform contemporary sustainable design. The author links material reuse practices to broader ecological thinking in design.
Plastic Memories of the Anthropocene
This essay uses philosophical frameworks to analyze plastics as objects with material agency—things that escape human control and embed themselves in ecosystems. The author examines plastic's persistence as both a literal and symbolic phenomenon of the Anthropocene era.
The material verse agency of the innate
This art essay reflects on the value of sourcing and processing local materials in ceramic art, arguing for deeper material intelligence as technology distances people from natural processes. It is a fine arts paper with no relevance to microplastics.
Un/Making the Plastic Straw: Designerly Inquiries into Disposability
This study uses design research methods to investigate the cultural and material life of plastic straws, examining how disposability is engineered and normalized in consumer products. The authors explore how design practices contribute to single-use plastic culture and how they might be reimagined to reduce waste.
Sürdürülebilir Barbie? Plastik Fantezi ve Ekolojik Farkındalığın Kesişiminde Barbie
This study examines the Barbie doll through the lens of Environmental Humanities and New Materialism, analyzing the ecological contradictions of the toy's plastic composition and global production and marketing footprint -- each Barbie generating approximately 648 grams of carbon per 182-gram doll. The paper argues that despite eco-conscious marketing, Barbie's toxic plastic materiality and consumption culture make it a significant symbol of the climate crisis.
Waste Journeys
This multidisciplinary study examined plastic waste as a material of the Anthropocene by tracing the journeys of plastic objects across cultural, natural, marine, and terrestrial landscapes, exploring how plastic's resilience makes it a defining and problematic artifact of modern civilization.
Architecture and Social Dreaming: Three Generations of Attempts to Revolutionize Architecture, from Le Corbusier to Ant Farm and Critical Speculative Design
Not relevant to microplastics — this paper analyzes three influential architectural manifestos from Le Corbusier, the Ant Farm Collective, and Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, arguing that architecture continually reinvents itself through political and social critique within capitalist modernity.
Storying Diffractive Pedagogy
This paper investigates how student teachers engage with materials and cooperative learning in early childhood teacher education programs. It is an education research paper using posthumanist theory, with no relevance to microplastics.
Exploration of Interior Material Based on Plastic Waste
Researchers explored the potential for plastic waste to be transformed into interior design materials, using observation, interviews, and documentation methods to analyze the process from material collection through fabrication. The study characterized the physical and chemical properties of plastic waste relevant to its use as an interior material and assessed structural strength alongside its environmental risks.
How to do things in the Plasticene: Ontopolitics of plastics in Arendt, Barthes, and Massumi
This humanities paper analyzes plastic as a cultural and philosophical object in the current geological era using the frameworks of Hannah Arendt, Roland Barthes, and Brian Massumi. It argues that plastic has become so embedded in modern life as to be nearly invisible and unthinkable, which contributes to difficulty in addressing plastic pollution.
El Antropoceno y el ocaso del sueño paramétrico
This architectural theory paper examines how the Anthropocene undermines the aspirations of parametric architecture, which sought to model buildings using mathematical and biological systems, arguing that climate and ecological complexity exceed the assumptions of parametric design.
Reverse Archaeology: Synthetic Surrogate as Ghosting Object
This fine arts paper examines how synthetic plastics have been used as surrogates for natural materials in museum conservation and art, and reflects on the irony that these supposedly preservation-oriented substitutes have become persistent environmental pollutants. It engages with the cultural dimensions of plastic's dual legacy as both material innovation and environmental burden.
From Trash to Fashion: Understanding Wearable Art as Environmental Activism
This paper examines wearable art projects that incorporate plastic waste as a form of environmental activism and material rhetoric, arguing that fashioning trash into garments makes ecological crises tangible and challenges consumer culture through aesthetic engagement.
Materia Construida. Reseña De Building Better – Less – Different: Circular Construction and Circular Economy, De Felix Heisel Y Dirk E. Hebel, En Colaboración Con Ken Webster (birkhäuser, 2022)
This review examines the book 'Building Better - Less - Different: Circular Construction and Circular Economy' by Heisel and Hebel, discussing sustainable architecture strategies for reducing the built environment's approximately 40 percent share of global carbon emissions through circular material use.
A Study on Environmentally Sustainable Interaction Design Guided by User Behavior: Addressing Unsustainable Consumption
Researchers developed a hybrid physical-digital interaction system using gamification, narrative design, and mixed-reality technologies to guide pro-environmental consumer behavior, constructing a closed-loop system that transforms abstract environmental responsibility into tangible participatory practices.
Assessment of Plastic-Infused Concrete Bricks and Their Suitability for Interlocking: Mechanical, Durability, and Environmental Perspectives
Researchers tested plastic-infused concrete bricks as a way to repurpose plastic waste in construction materials, evaluating their mechanical strength and suitability for different building applications. The study explores whether incorporating plastic waste into durable materials can reduce the plastic entering the environment as microplastics.
Design of an Intrinsically Motivating AR Experience for Environmental Awareness
Researchers designed an augmented reality learning experience called 'Resized Plastic' to raise environmental awareness about microplastics by leveraging intrinsic motivation principles. The experience was built on Dunleavy's AR framework to provide users with a systemic overview of the microplastics issue and connect it to everyday actions.
Plastiglomerates, Microplastics, Nanoplastics
This essay explores the cultural and ecological meaning of plastic pollution through art and speculative design, examining how plastics have become embedded in every environment including the human body. It argues that understanding plastic as part of a 'dark ecology' is essential for rethinking our relationship with synthetic materials.
Circular Product Practices for a Post-Plastic Transition
This study examines how designers can support a post-plastic transition by identifying circular product practices, combining design theory with practical action frameworks to define the competencies and strategies needed for responsible polymeric material use within circular economy models.
The Outdoor Condition: Reading Arendt on a Warming Planet
This article examines whether Hannah Arendt's political thought remains relevant to the contemporary planetary crisis, using a distinction between outdoor and indoor environments to analyze three types of artificial adaptation to a warming planet. The author draws on Arendt's account of embodied human experience to explore how environmental awareness may be narrowing. While not directly about microplastics, the philosophical framework addresses broader questions about how humans relate to environmental change and artificial materials in their surroundings.
Becoming Plastic, Transforming Justice
This chapter traces the word 'plastic' from its theological meaning (the human capacity to be shaped by divine action) to its modern association with pollution and colonial extraction, arguing that ethical engagement with plastics requires reclaiming both our responsibility to act and our capacity to be transformed.
Beyond Structure-Function: Getting at Sustainability within Biomimicry Pedagogy
This review examines how biomimicry pedagogy can be structured to move beyond simple structure-function analogies and genuinely incorporate sustainability principles, arguing that without explicit frameworks guiding learners toward ecological accountability, biomimicry practice risks reinforcing unsustainable design outcomes.
Por uma arqueologia do antropoceno: tempo, identidade e novos artefactos numa nova era
This Portuguese-language archaeology paper discusses the emergence of 'Anthropocene Archaeology' — the study of human artifacts and materials from the current geological era of human dominance. Plastics, including microplastics, are among the defining material markers of the Anthropocene that will be part of this archaeological record.
Regenerative Product Design: a Literature Review in an Emerging Field
This literature review examines the emerging field of regenerative product design, exploring how materials and systems can be designed to repair, recreate, or revitalize their own resources at local, regional, and global scales. The authors analyze how regenerative principles differ from sustainability and circular economy frameworks and what they mean for material selection, user behavior, and product interaction.