Materials experiments and materials research at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest

Creative material innovation

In addition to its cultural role, artistic creation has played an important role in the application and experimentation of new materials and technologies since the early years of human culture. This is particularly true in crafts and applied arts such as glass, textiles and ceramics. Given the challenges of today’s world, design and human scientific and creative activity can guide research activities as drivers of innovation, and their use as tools can provide a new perspective for shaping the future. Design, with its ability to shape the world around us, to influence our social and ecological issues through its concepts, is nowadays a key contributor to innovation.

In line with the spirit of László Moholy-Nagy, the university believes that it is important for its creative students, researchers and designers to see themselves not as isolated actors creating within the physical framework of industry, but as innovators focusing on real social problems, taking into account the concerns of society. Recent years have seen the emergence not only of products that apply future technologies and approaches to market needs, but also new approaches to university education that are shaping students’ attitudes to design. As a result, a number of independent initiatives are being taken in the field of social and environmental sustainability, and a significant number of these are materialising in material experiments or materials research. These activities are typically grounded in artistic research, where the artist is an active instrument and shaper of the research through creation or as a creative creator in his or her own right.

These initiatives, which initially came mainly from the teaching/research community, have been formally taken up by the university. The first institutionalised activities relevant to materials research were brought together by the MOME Digital Craft Lab from 2014. “The lab aims at a contemporary, progressive and marketable reinterpretation of the New Craft fields based on craft traditions within the framework of project-based, integrative research and development activities using innovative technologies. Its main research areas are: digital object technologies […], new generation of material combination experiments […]”.
Abstract Nature (2016) was a related design project in the direction of food design, a joint design project between the university’s design students and Hungary’s leading chefs, with the aim of exploring new concepts in the field of fine dining, researching trends and ways forward.

Following these two pioneering initiatives, a number of student projects and theses have opened up the field of materials research through materials experiments, in addition to applied research and development projects. Some of these projects were later continued as doctoral research projects, and nowadays completed doctoral research projects are available, active relevant interdisciplinary research is carried out at the MOME Innovation Centre, and a materials experiments course is available for Master’s students. In addition, there has been an increase in the number of materials research related papers in both undergraduate term papers and theses. To support design research, MOME, in collaboration with the Hungarian Fashion and Design Agency, last year established the Budapest Design Material Library, a pioneering Central European link to the international Material Connexion collection, giving students and interested parties access to a wide range of innovative materials. As part of a campus development project in recent years, the MOME Tech Park has been built on the campus, providing the opportunity to realise the designs being developed on campus and further development opportunities in the field of materials research infrastructure.

Keeping in mind the thematic courses on materials research at art universities in Western Europe, an analytical-research methodology involving DIY-type developments has also been introduced at MOME in the past year. The methodology, developed for Master’s students, can be acquired in the “COMPO” course. The agile methodology, which strengthens reflective design skills, integrates contemporary aspects of material design and development into the teaching, joining the mainstream of international development. In essence, the developments will bring closer the possibility of design responsibility in sustainable object design by experimenting with composite materials and circular object creation models. Formal demonstrations of the successful composite materials created in the course will be carried out through professional relationships with materials researchers at the University of Technology and the University of Veszprém. This will enable cross-disciplinary materials development by combining artistic re-search and engineering.

Overall, it can be concluded that it is of utmost importance for the university to integrate the continuously deepening research field of materials research and its practice into education, in order to support the spontaneously developing material innovation efforts among students at several levels in line with the university’s values and to transform them into relevant research projects that can be exploited to create new knowledge and skills.

In terms of their subject matter, the relevant projects of MOME have been sorted into several (non-disjunctive) categories in this article, along which the increasingly complex, contemporary-contextual didactic deepening behind the material associations is also clearly visible.

“Many individual initiatives are being taken in the field of social and environmental sustainability, and a significant number of these are materialising in some form of materials experimentation or research”

The most extensive first group are projects where designers are looking for ways to create material solutions (in accordance with or in conscious relation to the physical properties of the material) that are novel and have a specific, intended effect on the people interacting with the resulting objects. How can such an effect be achieved and how and in what applications can the results be used? These are typically new forms or surface qualities created from existing materials, based primarily on modifications to the existing properties of the material, and can therefore be strictly speaking described as material manipulation. This category includes almost all design tasks by their very nature where a physical outcome is created. This is because the fundamental task of designers is to determine the perceived properties of the resulting physical outcome, thereby placing the creation in context. In terms of its industrial relevance, the automotive design projects with Mercedes-Benz stand out, where CMF (Color-Material-Finish) designers have an explicit dedicated task to apply perceived material qualities to a high level of quality. In this field, new designs for concrete facade elements were developed with the support of Market Zrt.

The next category is the creation of new structures. This includes new materials that are created from a systematic macroscopic composition of existing raw materials and that have new properties compared to the original raw material. All knitted and woven formal structure and design projects in textile design can be included in this category, but some researchers, teachers, and students are particularly involved in the creation of new materials. Applied knowledge of materials in this field is organically integrated into educational processes, taking into account the socio-cultural context, thus linking the results of materials research with industry and the culture associated with the objects we use. Several research teachers are involved in this field, and it is also integrated into the training structure. A special area of structural design is the “flexible from rigid” type of experimental head development. These create flexible materials from rigid materials by combining components, structures, and bonds, or by pattern cutting of homogeneous materials, to reveal the wide range of applications of the material’s potential.

Projects that create new materials with new properties by combining existing materials with known properties can be classified as material combinations. This type of materials experimentation approach first emerged as a dominant trend within the university in the early years of the Digital Craft Lab. The work has mainly focused on the human context and perceived material qualities but has also introduced sustainability as a consideration. This led to the creation of special concrete materials and fluorescent glass objects. In general, the early years were characterized by a focus on the imagined material properties of the work, and experiments focused on achieving this. The circular material research projects are characterized by a strong sustainability motivation and aim to shift object-making to a circular model of creation by reimagining human-generated waste as raw material.

The new model aims at bringing together the life cycle of materials and their function as objects, their recyclability and the reassessment of the potential of our raw material resources. This approach has also been integrated into the educational programme through the COMPO course mentioned above.

Apolka Temesi’s material development “RAWfiction – Project”, a proof of concept for her doctoral research on “Restorative Raw Material Centred Design”, is a project to revitalise domestic and regional wool residues affected by the textile industry. The development has taken a full trajectory from material experimentation to the creation of a marketable product, which today has international novelty value. By developing new production technology, the material, which has been a burden on industry, will be used to create interior design and acoustic cladding that meets today’s international green standards. The value-creating circular model was created by bringing together players from the market and science sectors, and is now a brand in its own right.

Zsuzsa Deák’s Re-Built Glass project and thesis also developed a new concept for the reuse of glass sludge treated as industrial waste, which she implemented in a small number of architectural projects. Gabriella Maczák’s thesis project “Csuhé” experimented with the use of maize husk and other agricultural by-products of maize production as a raw material for paper packaging. The general characteristic of the projects listed is that they are small-scale, the results are documented as “design research”, reproducible with an acceptable level of error and can form the basis for a scientific or engineering materials science research project, the outcome of which could be a certified feedstock with associated business potential (e.g. The University would also like to make improvements in the areas of infrastructure, professional collaboration and in-house expertise in order to measure the results and document the physical properties of the materials. In addition to the diploma theses, valuable results were also achieved in the “BIODESIGN Fashion & Textile” course, a collaboration between MOME and the Hungarian Fashion and Design Agency. The course also includes the rediscovery of traditional natural materials and their use in new contexts.

Electronic textile interfaces and textiles combined with sensors and wearable technology will form the category of smart materials. They have in common that they have or serve an interactive function, extending the properties of the resulting materials or objects beyond their physical reality. Thus extending the uses and possibilities of materials. At the MOME Innovation Centre, Esteban de la Torre and Judit Kárpáti are currently working on a research project to explore the possibilities of connecting the digital and physical worlds through multisensory installations. The project of Dávid Holló, Dávid Pelyva and Benedek Tasi combines digital fabrication technologies with robotics and innovative materials for the biological revitalisation of coastal areas. As the complex structures are built to house plants and animals and take their final shape after a growing phase, this project could be classified in the following category.

Another category related to sustainability is growing, which can be divided into two main types. The first type is when the growing process directly creates objects for use, such as Dóra Szilágyi’s project supported by the NRNKP, in which she used mycelium fungi to grow a lamp holder, a flower pot and a candle holder. The other type is when new raw material is created by growing them, which can later be used for a variety of purposes. A promising research in this field is the PhD thesis “NATURING” by Anett Papp, which aims at creating textiles (from plant roots).

With the advent of VR devices and the advent of quarantine periods in epidemic situations, virtual materials research has emerged as a new element, aiming at the study of materials that exist only in virtual space, so that their properties are not limited by the rule-systems of physical reality. This year, such a thesis was Réka Huszár’s project “Curating my future fashion”, which aimed at designing an AR clothing collection that would only appear on filters. The university sees great potential in this area, and expects a boost from the ongoing development of AR-VR infrastructure and the empirical knowledge that is being built up.

At Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, there is a wide range of material experiments and creative research activities related to materials research, which are integrally and topically linked to global challenges and trends. In addition to researchers, faculty, and students using the results of materials research through their design activities and linking innovation to society and the market, there is enormous potential for launching design and art-driven scientific research. The institution sees the realization of these potentials partly in the development of its own infrastructure (e.g., acquisition of machines suitable for conducting materials experiments), partly in the development of its own intellectual capital and research capabilities, and partly in the establishment and maintenance of research collaborations. In the area of research collaborations, the university is open to expanding existing collaborations with universities, research institutes, and industrial partners.