Furniture constructed with plastic made from recycled, pirated CDs. Transluscent, yet insulated, skylights made from featherweight gel. These are some examples of how savvy designers and architects are incorporating cutting-edge -- and often eco-friendly -- materials into corporate, retail, and residential buildings and interior design.
For nearly five years, Blaine Brownell, a Seattle-based architect who has worked on such projects as the campus plan for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a prototype store for Office Depot (ODP), has been researching and compiling innovations in materials science and how they can be applied to architecture and design.
Brownell maintains a popular Web site, Transstudio.com, where he posts much of his research. In his just-published book, Transmaterial (Princeton Architectural Press), he has compiled 200 of the most innovative materials that have appeared on the site to date. The book neatly categorizes each product according to its material family, and suggests applications for each. The products range from high-performance ceramics strong enough to be used as body armor, to a blend of rubber that's controlled by microprocessors and can form "breathing" curtains and windows.
Transmaterial joins a growing number of books focusing on new feats in materials science, targeted to designers and architects. Notable titles include Material ConneXion (John Wiley & Sons) and Material Architecture (Elsevier), both published in late 2005. Recently, BusinessWeek Online's Reena Jana spoke with Brownell about the current wave of cool new materials on the market -- and how and why consumers and companies alike should be aware of the growing number of innovations in this arena.
Why is there a "revolution" in innovative materials at this moment? Actually, we're seeing technologies that took many taking decades to become available to consumers. Aerogel, memory foam, and whatnot were developed by NASA and the military in the 1960s and are just hitting the market now. We're seeing all of these new materials because technological advancement and productivity has reached high levels of both quality and quantity.
How and when does a material qualify as truly innovative? It's challenging to judge materials and products in terms of their "innovativeness," which is not the same thing as faddishness. I'm not smart enough to know exactly what will seem dated a few years from now. This book is like a photograph -- the second you take a photograph, the moment is obsolete.
The materials industry is a moving target. And we'll be looking at totally different materials in two years. That it's trendy to look at new materials now means that there is a lot of creativity, and the creative spirit is fueling advances in material science. What's more interesting isn't any one product or solution, but the fact that there are many people behind all of these ideas.
Why should architects -- and consumers -- familiarize themselves with the latest and most cutting-edge concretes, plastics, fabrics, and other products? I think we will see a trend toward consumer awareness in regard to construction products and materials, parallel to what we've seen in the food industry already. Today, a lot of people consume free-range chicken, organic produce, and antibiotic-free milk, because there's an unprecedented level of scrutiny involved in making creative and consumer decisions. Today, when we go to the deli or the supermarket as a chef or a consumer, we might think more deeply about where our food came from before we buy our vegetables or meat.
Thanks to the media, there's been a change of awareness in our society in general. I believe it will happen in the arena of our built environment, too. More importantly, as energy becomes more and more expensive, consumers will want to know how to affordably heat or light their homes. Awareness is important.
Throughout the book, there are examples of products developed by architects -- like laser-cut wood panels co-designed by Steven Holl. Are architects designing materials because they can't find what they want in the marketplace? We're definitely seeing a very new, emergent trend of architects getting involved in developing materials. It seems as if some are eschewing theory for pragmatics, or else applying theory in a pragmatic way. In many cases, this trend exists because architects are simply interested in creating things.
For example, an architect might help develop a new type of lighting system simply out of a pure interest in light and its properties, and how light might affect a certain built space. Or, perhaps a lighting device that would be appropriate for a building doesn't exist in the market -- so the architect finds a way to devise it, simply fueled by a general sense of play. And the construction industry is quite conservative, because of the scale of physical risk and the economic outlay involved. So some architects get proactive and make what they can't find.
Do you think that your book can be read as a statement about the need for environmentalist awareness and activism in the architectural and construction industries? I realize it's easy to sound environmentalist-preachy. I always try to have a really objective squared-off position, one that offers a long-term perspective. But it can't hurt to question everything, within reason.
Today, our society has serious challenges in terms of global warming, resource allocation, peak natural gas, and peak oil. The laws of supply and demand have shifted. I'm interested in how to approach such "gloom-and-doom" realities from a positive standpoint. That's what's so exciting about the flood of new materials into the market now.
It's not any one product that is amazing to me, but instead the collective aspirations and positive endeavors behind so many new products and materials. It seems as if there are many, many people -- designers, architects, engineers -- struggling to proactively mitigate our circumstances.
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