Trip | Ongoing iterative process | Pedesis | Relation

Australian Center of Contemporary Arts

Now let's zoom in to the corten steel on ACCA. There are several reasons that Wood Marsh chose corten steel. The designer team wants to reference and connect with the site's original land functions and context. The previous occupations on the site were iron foundries and warehouse factories. The building's form and corten steel's colour could recall the site's industrial history and be able to associate with the colour of the Malthouse (polychrome brick) next to ACCA. The image created by the weathering steel and the sky is also a reminder of the site's former factory history. Meanwhile, the corten steel's ability to protect itself through chemical reactions is another reason designers choose it. According to the interview with Roger Wood, he described the corten steel as a material that could last forever since it could take care of itself, and he wants to create ACCA as a building with the sense of a rock-like building that "was built 5 million years ago and through erosion exposed".25 In summary, Wood Marsh uses corten steel mainly because of its external performnance qualities and the desire to express a sense of history through its inherent capacity for self-protecting combined with the building form.

Although referencing the site's industrial history is quite an anthropocentric idea, designers of the ACCA try to find a balance between the form and material. Kate Lloyd Thomas argues that some of the architects’ “concern with material aways seems to return finally to form”.26 But the designers from Wood Marsh did not. They did not neglect the inherent power of the corten steel and let the material express itself and collaborate with the form and environment.

25. Acca_melbourne, “On ACCA’s 30th Anniversary: Roger Wood”, posted August 2014, YouTube video, 1:45, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=s0WR_E7M3ow&list=PL3C37445189A5DA8C.

26. Thomas, “Introduction: Architecture and Material Practive”, 6.

Australian Center of Contemporary Arts

So how does our protagonist, the corten steel, live in the ACCA?

The corten steel does not only form the facade of the ACCA but is also used in some of the interior structures which is fascinating. As mentioned many times in this article, the corten steel itself is protected by the rusting process of the outer layer, which protects its inner second layer of structure and makes it stronger. The outdoor material is exposed to the atmospheric corrosion caused by rain, sunlight and wind. It protects the indoor weathering steel as if the tiny iterative reactions inside the weathering steel, like particles, are amplified and projected onto the building.

The corten steel on ACCA responds to the three criteria of performative new materialism. Pedesis, the matter appears stable on the outside, yet it is full of uncertainty on the inside. Corten steel on the exterior of the building occurs atmospheric corrosion. The material does not appear to change drastically on the exterior performance; however, the chemical composition in the adhering protective layer constantly reacts to the elements in the atmosphere. The constantly rusting process also responds to an ongoing iterative process. The criteria relation presents in several ways. The relationship between the protective layer and the material's inner structure, the relationship between the chemical composition and natural environment elements, the relationship between the exterior corten steel and interior corten steel, and the relationship between the human and corten steel.

Like the idea from McLaughlin, the site, climate, time, processes, services, and inhabitants are all building materials.27 When corten steel was used for a building, the weather, the atmosphere elements, and the chemical composition are all become the matter that formed the building. When architects started using the corten steel, whether they thought it or not, it began to express itself and tried to bring humans and the natural environment into a partnership, gradually moving into the age of new materialism.

If we want to get further closer to the new materialism with corten steel, we should put our humans, machinery, and material in equal status. Referring to Kate Barad28 , Katie Lloyd Thomas29, and Vicki Kirby,30 body, machinery, and materials are all matters. We could say rain, oxygen and wind from the natural environment are also matters. The natural environment, humans, materials, and machinery should collaborate to show the value of materials acting on architecture. Instead of complete rusting in one step, we should allow more autonomy for the matter itself in the process of chemical reactions

“an ongoing open process of mattering through which ‘mattering’ itself acquires meaning and form in the realization of different agential possibilities.”31

27. Thomas, “Introduction: Architecture and Material Practive”, 7.

28. Gamble, Hanan and Nail, “What is New,” 122.

29. Thomas, “Introduction: Architecture and Material Practive”, 6.

30. Gamble, Hanan and Nail, “What is New,” 124.

31. Karan Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity. Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.”, Signs 28, no.3 (2003): 817, doi: 00979740/2003/2803-0006$10.00.

It is worth noting that Roger Wood initially wanted to use copper for the ACCA's facade cladding.32 However, due to the budget restriction, they finally chose the corten steel as the cladding material of the ACCA's facade. As copper has no way of protecting itself from rusting, designers had to choose corten steel, which has a similar colour appearance to copper. If we understand copper and corten steel according to the performative new materialist approach to the matter, their material composition is entirely different. Corten steel is an alloy, and copper is only one of the elements in it. We can find corten steel may be a fake copper for the designer, but it has more power of the internet capacity than copper. The designer looks for the internal capacity of corten steel and therefore chooses it. In a sense, the architect still chooses the corten steel because of the material's own qualities. However, there are some imitations of corten steel deviate entirely from the material itself.

Some companies developed and produced pigment to pretend the rusted look of the COR-TEN Steel. The pigment is introduced into the airbrushing gun, and the gun will pulverise the pigment on the surface of the wood, aluminium, plastic surfaces, etc.33 Why would people choose similar pigments over corten steel? Users often select pigments that mimic the appearance of corten steel to achieve a quicker and easier colour. They ignore the material itself and focus only on the final form.

Karen Barad argued that matter is not a thing, it is a phenomenon. Matter is made up of tiny iterations of internally stable and unstable phenomena.34 We should learn and understand the material through the inherent phenomena rather than only focus on its appearance. The pedesis, ongoing iterative process and relation in the fake corten-like painting spray pigment are different from the corten steel. The alloying elements, chemical compositions and chemical reactions are lost in the pigment.

Although Wood Marsh initially saw corten steel as a replacement for copper, they eventually discovered its inherent qualities and derived a new design concept. This design concept was not given to the material by the designer but by the material to the designer. However, the designers and artists who chose the pigment did not care about the material itself, nor did they put themselves on an equal footing with the material as collaborators. They entirely overshadow the meaning of the weathering steel itself with their design concept and meaning; they stand in a privileged position and ignore the nature of the material.

Suppose the corten steel used in ACCA buildings was the trigger that initially brought us into the new materialist era. In that case, the pigments that mimic the corten steel are the stagnation that stranded us in the Anthropocene era. The material is shaped by the iterations that occur within itself, and the connections of the elements within, rather than by meaning and words. The pigments of corten steel colours should have their own name and not be sold as imitators.

32. Acca_melbourne, “On ACCA’s 30th Anniversary: Roger Wood”.

33. “Corten Rust Effect Paint”, cromas, accessed June, 2022, https://cromaspaints.com/cortenpaint-effect/corten-steel-paint-effect.php.

34. Karen Barad, “‘Matter feels, concerses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers’ Interview with Karen Barad”, in New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies eds. Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin (Michigan Publishing, 2012), 50.

At the End of the story

“Matter is seen as vital and vibrant and as having agency and as being ‘mutually constituted’ with the discursive.”35

To sum up, the process of extracting and manufacturing corten steel is a process that damages the natural environment. In this process, humans place themselves in a binary and separate position from nature. However, when people began using corten steel, they started to pay attention to its inherent activity, and the steel began cooperating with the natural environment. Performative new materialism encourage human to see themselves as matter and collaborate with materials through the understanding of the inherent capacity, phenomenon and relations of the material. Corten steel owns the strong and nonnegligible inner quality that represents itself. They expressed their quality to the architectural realm no matter if the form of the building has the privilege. Corten steel brings humans one step further into the performative new materialism. Although there are, fake corten steel arose, keeping part of the material and the human mind in the Anthropocene. Copycats do not have the solid inherent capacity to replace the corten steel.