Thank you to everyone who joined us for our kick-off event! We were delighted to welcome architect and author Christopher Bardt to Los Angeles to discuss his recent book Material and Mind.

Bardt’s research interests are focused on materials and the role they play in our self definition. For the past two decades he has developed pedagogy based on material engagement and resistance. He has been thinking about how materials guide us and how their properties generate insights. Materials resist us and make us aware of their resistance, a necessary condition of creativity. His new book Material and Mind was inspired in part by the mysterious connection between creativity and material engagement in the studio.

In Material and Mind, Christopher Bardt delves deeply into the interaction of mind and material world, mediated by language, image, and the process of making. He examines thought not as something “pure” and autonomous but as emerging from working with material, and he identifies this as the source of imagination and creative insight. This takes place as much in such disciplines as cognitive science, anthropology, and poetry as it does in the more obvious painting, sculpture, and design. In some fields, the medium of work is, in fact, the very medium of thinking—as fabric is for the tailor.

Special thank you’s to PLPSoCal for co-sponsoring the event, Madisons Innovative for their generous support, and Helms Design Center for venue sponsorship and creative partnership. Photos: Rennella Photography