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Future Buildings

The ultimate tribute was the radical 1977 design of the Centre Pompidou in Paris by architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, in which this belief was illustrated by turning the building inside out. The construction, tubes, piping, air-ducts and all other installations were conspicuously shown as an ode to technology.

Sick building syndrome is a condition in which physical symptoms are attributed to bad, or poorly maintained, air-conditioning systems and the presence of bacteria, fungi and viruses. This resulted in a reversal of thinking about buildings and led to a new awareness: couldn’t we just open our windows again? The installation of piping during construction slows progress and delays the interior completion, besides leading to higher failure costs.

Installations are becoming more important, but if current trends continue we should be looking to other solutions. Complete, comprehensive prefabrication of components is complicated because it is difficult to integrate water, electricity and heating systems in prefabricated elements, so the entire system has to be completed in situ. Another disadvantage is that the installation needs to be accessible for maintenance, or in case of failure. The result is ugly, modular ceilings and demountable floors. Wouldn’t it be great if we could replace the entire installation with materials? A paint for energy, steps that control light, a bag of salt for cooling? Multifunctional, smart and interactive materials that replace the functions of these facilities can dramatically change the future of buildings, making them more efficient and sustainable. CO2-absorbing, temperature regulating and self-cleaning materials are currently trends, but will be the standard within a generation.

Multifunctional, smart and interactive materials that replace the functions of these facilities can dramatically change the future of buildings, making them more efficient and sustainable.

Many material innovations are copied from nature. Mick Pearce’s ‘Council House 2’ in Melbourne saves 70 percent of its water and 80 percent of its energy by regulating temperature using water cooling and phase change materials (PCM’s). Brian Korgel, a professor of nanotechnology, and his team have produced a nano-crystal made of copper, indium, gallium and selenium. This inorganic material is dissolved in a liquid so that it can be applied as a paint with a performance similar to PV cells. The thin layer means that the yield is much lower, but this is compensated by using large surfaces. Aerogel – also known as frozen smoke – is the world’s lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air.

The insulation must, of course, be top-notch. Aerogel is a good example. It is a solid with a very low density, as it is approximately 98 percent air, though it has a solid, porous structure. Most aero gels are silicon-based, but there are also gels based on metals or carbon compounds. Insulation is a hot item, of course. The Material Xperience show had examples such as the ‘EcoCradle’, a sustainable insulation made of chipboard fibre and mushrooms.

Motorways & dance floors

Another innovative way of generating energy is the piezoelectric cell. The piezoelectric effect is the phenomenon that certain crystals produce electricity under the influence of pressure, such as bending, and vice-versa: they deform when electrically charged.

The electricity generated from the vibrations of six hundred lorries driving over the road every hour could power forty homes. Surely this means that a well-used office staircase should be able to light the workplace?

Besides generating energy with solar paint and piezoelectrics, cooling with PCMs, insulating with vacuum panels and airgel materials, other materials can take over the functions of installations. An optical light film from 3M with a prismatic surface reflects more than 98 percent of incoming sunlight and is able to provide daylight to underground parking spaces or basements through ‘light pipes’. Window washing is no longer necessary if a coating with the Lotus Effect (Stolotusan) is applied and shading can be controlled by glass with a photochromic effect.

Saint Gobain’s Sage glass is an example. The same principle could colour a roof and façade black during winter and white in the summer. And an awning can be made of a moving material: bi-metallic surfaces that deform under the sun’s heat due to different coefficients of expansion can incorporated in the façade to function as an ingenious system for daylight regulation.

These examples all go to show that chemistry can take over from mechanics. Smart materials chemistry can replace mechanical systems and may spearhead a completely new and sustainable path for construction and architecture.

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The first phase

The first phase was a period of blind naiveté. As a young designer anything was possible and the details of how my concept would make its way into reality was a secondary concern (if at all). Perhaps this is one of the primary reasons employing young designers can be so refreshing and energizing to a studio as they can be the source of fresh new forms, trends and ideas unfettered by any bias or understanding for the realities of materials, manufacturing or the laws of physics.

But for me, I sensed that this disconnection between concept and reality also represented a significant amount of risk—for my design, the client and the end user. I felt like I was working without a net, with no underlying understanding of how to convert the art of my concepts into designs that solved more problems than they created. For some designers, I think that’s where they wished to remain, fearing that to know too much about the realities of materials and manufacturing would somehow “break the spell” and suddenly all their crazy, beautiful expressive forms would somehow become plain boxes with tons of draft and huge fillets.

The second phase

I became terrified that everything I designed had some fatal flaw or would cost too much to produce

The second phase of this evolving relationship developed with my mounting awareness of all the rules of manufacturing — what you had to do versus could not do, what drove costs up and how to reduce those costs, materials selection guidelines, assembly techniques, and all the spectacular failures that can and do occur in manufacturing. I became terrified that everything I designed had some fatal flaw or would cost too much to produce or, worse yet, couldn’t be produced at all. I think this might be the worst fear for any young designer: to find themselves caged in by all these rules and restrictions, no long capable of developing designs without a manufacturer or engineer pointing out how ill-conceived it was or that it would be too expensive to produce or not structurally sound.

The third phase

This final phase is an on-going relationship with materials and manufacturing. It extends beyond understanding those rules to embracing them. With the ability and confidence to apply that knowledge, my own criticisms can be suspended to experiment and ideate, knowing I can address those issues when needed. By owning this technical experience, this periodic materials-and-processes review takes place within my own design process.

Obviously, developing this expertise takes time and there are always new materials and manufacturing technologies to learn about. But with this sensitivity, form and concept development, as well as manufacturing and assembly methodology, can take place within the same cyclical concept-critique-refine loop. So when it’s time to do a review with an engineer or manufacturer, I’ve already considered many of the issues that will most likely be discussed and have already accounted for them in the design. And if not, I’ll at least understand what they’re talking about.

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When combining these materials with design the door to future products and solutions opens.

One of the main remaining barriers is the lack of knowledge of the potential use of advanced materials in designing new products. Danish Design Centre has partnered up with FAD in Barcelona and Happy Materials in Prague on the EU-project DAMADEI – “Design and Advanced Materials As a Driver of European Innovation”. The project that runs till Ultimo October seeks to put focus on European competitiveness.

It also aims to raise awareness among designers and to provide them with the appropriate experience on how to take advantage of the huge opportunities regarding these advanced materials.

Output

Besides consolidating a long-term collaborative European infrastructure to enhance the current network of partners through the involvement of the main European design sector and advanced materials stakeholders DAMADEI also aims to identify the needs, barriers and common areas of applications of both sectors as well as developing the potential interaction of Design and Advanced Materials as drivers of European innovation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BDx1iSQISA

As a part of this 4 workshops (London 1st March, Copenhagen 22nd April, Prague 28nd May and Barcelona 8th July) will be hold to stimulate creative processes by exchanging European best practices in design through the application of advanced materials.

Following these four workshops the exhibition ‘MATERIALSM EUROPEAN TOUR’ has been created. The exhibition that is curated by the partners of DAMADEI, aims to educate and to inspire the creative industries with 40+ advanced materials chosen from the material families that are driving today´s innovations:

Active materials, Nano materials, Advanced manufacturing, High performance polymers, Light alloys, Gels & Foams, Coatings, Advanced composites, Advanced textiles and Fibres.

At last but not least – and based on the DAMADEI’s mapping of the European Design and Advanced Materials sectors – a collaborative platform with an online database and meeting point for Design and Advanced Materials is being created. his platform will give any user the possibility to search European actors of advanced materials within suppliers, designers, technology centres and connecting centres in nine different material categories.

Advanced Materials

An advanced material is any material that, through the precise control of its composition and internal structure, features a series of exceptional properties (mechanical, electrical, optical, magnetic properties, etc) or functionalities (self-repairing, shape change, decontamination, transformation of energy, etc) that differentiate it from the rest of the universe of materials; or any that, when transformed through advanced manufacturing techniques, features such properties or functionalities.

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Look at the packaging of the next product you buy and in a lot of cases you will find some information about the environmental impacts of the product. Some of this is basic information about how the product should be recycled at the end of its useful life. An increasing number of products display more sophisticated environmental data such as an eco label, the amount of recycled content in the materials used, or details of the product’s energy efficiency or carbon footprint.

The number of products displaying an eco label is set to increase over the coming years as companies introduce their own eco labels and organisations such as the European Commission and national governments expand the scope of existing eco labelling schemes and introduce new regulation, such as the Grenelle 2 law.

Choosing sustainable products

The rise of eco labels has implications for everybody, as we are all consumers, but there also specific implications for anybody involved in the design of products and the selection of materials.

As consumers, eco labels provide the opportunity to reduce the environmental impact associated with the products we buy by using the information in the label to influence our purchase decisions. However, consumers should be wary of ‘green wash’ – attempts by manufacturers to promote certain environmental credentials of a product to divert attention from other, more significant, environmental impacts. For example, if a car manufacturer wants to tell you about renewable energy used at their production plant rather than the fuel efficiency of their cars, the alarm bells should be ringing.

Here are a few tips to help you avoid being tricked by green wash and make more sustainable product choices by:

1. Having a basic understanding of the lifecycle of products and the impacts products they have on the environment from material extraction through to disposal.
2. Look for eco labels that provide credible, science-based environmental information such as the European Union’s Eco Label, the Carbon Trust’s Carbon Label, or the US EPA’s Energy Star label.
3. Make use of tools such as GoodGuide which provides an independent assessment of the environmental, social and health impacts of products and is available and a web-browser plug-in and a smartphone app.

Choosing Sustainable Materials

As designers, eco labels and the publication of product environmental data provide an opportunity for you to differentiate your product based on its environmental performance. One way to improve the environmental impact of your product is by choosing more sustainable materials. But as we have already heard in this blog series, there is no such thing as a ‘sustainable material’! So unfortunately there is no catalogue of sustainable materials for you to choose from. What you can do is to try to choose the most sustainable material for your application. I therefore encourage you to focus on the sustainable use of a material for a given application, rather than trying to find a ‘sustainable material’.

For both consumers and designers, the trend towards displaying more information about the environmental impacts of a product should be seen as an opportunity to move towards more sustainable products, a more sustainable use of materials, and a more sustainable future.

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Living in a material world

The history of humanity begins with the development of civilisations that today we group into technological phases defined by the material that at any given time attained the highest degree of development (Stone Age, Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age). Ever since, the development of the human being has been closely linked to his relationship with the materials that surround him: how to extract them, how to transform them, how to use them, how to synthesise them, how to recycle them… right from the earliest materials that man extracted from nature (timber, clay, stone, etc) to the use of the application of heat to the revolution in nanotechnology and nanoscience.

Technological Challenges

The technological challenges are the greatest ever faced by man in all his history. Despite having perfected the extraction of raw materials, dominated the synthesis of new materials, developed processing and manufacturing technologies and used different sources of energy for our activities, we have barely taken into account the consequences that all these phases had on our surroundings.

We are currently living in the silicon era, a new revolution that has propitiated the development of electronics and information and communication technologies.

Today we know that the environmental vector cannot be neglected in our activities; it has to be considered as a factor of maximum importance. In this context, recent decades have seen the emergence of a new discipline called bionics or biomimetics. These terms became popular as the result of the publication of the book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (1997) by Janine Beynus, which deals with “a new science that studies models from nature and is inspired in these designs and processes to address human problems”.

Biomimetics and sustainability

Science and Engineering have always had nature as a model and have used it to prosper; however, in recent times this natural study has become systematised, coherently involving professionals from different disciplines (biologists, designers, physicists, engineers, chemists, etc) to maximise the benefits extracted from the knowledge of Nature. While currently it still contains secrets that we cannot decipher, there is no doubt that the mimicry of natural processes, materials and solutions will be one of society’s routes to development and innovation.

At this point we have to stop and reflect: is biomimetics the universal solution to our environmental problems? The answer is no. Biomimetics is a tool under development and a source of innovation; a “new” (insofar as it refers to systematisation) starting point and approach to the search for occasional solutions to the challenges set by technological development. And we cannot always obtain the sought-for answer from Nature; at this point, as researchers well know, we need to change the model and continue to probe.

But there is still a tendency to directly associate biomimetics with sustainability, as if the former unequivocally involved the latter. There is no doubt that Nature can teach us much about how to protect life and resources (she has been doing it for millions of years), but knowing how to properly channel the information she provides towards developments that represent an environmental advance depends on us only insofar as it helps in “limiting the damage to the environment”.

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In addition to the transportation energy savings offered by resources that are close-at-hand, a renewed evaluation of material practices can enlighten the creation of new products

David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance reminds us that we used to have a carbohydrate economy: two hundred years ago, Americans consumed two tons of vegetables for every ton of minerals; but thirty-five years ago, we consumed eight tons of minerals for every ton of vegetables. Cambridge professor Michael Ashby has also chronicled humanity’s global journey towards a near-total dependence on nonrenewable materials. The implications of this trajectory are clear.

Despite our near-total reliance on nonrenewable feedstocks, however, the situation is gradually changing. Many countries now mandate biofuel use, for example. Bioplastics are quickly replacing petroleum-based plastics in many applications, vegetable-based inks and oils are becoming more commonplace, and agricultural products are diversifying. These changes, which I’ve outlined in more detail below, are exerting a direct influence.

Increasing renewable resources

Plant-based feedstocks exhibit two benefits over other renewable resources: biomass is a natural store of energy and carbon, and it can be made into real, tangible products which can be worked with.

The first necessary transformation towards a carbohydrate economy will involve the expanded development of renewable resources, including both agricultural and forest-based products. This will include a rapid increase in the production of biopolymers for a variety of uses—from simplistic substances like packaging and films to complex products like microprocessors and composite panels for automobiles. Wood will also be processed in new ways that enhance its durability and functionality, and an increased number of mutant hybrids formed by the merging of wood and plastic will appear.

Plant-based feedstocks exhibit two benefits over other renewable resources: biomass is a natural store of energy and carbon, and it can be made into tangible products. However, significant challenges impede the rapid industrialization of biomass resources, including increased competition with food and energy markets, unsustainable harvesting practices, and the need to create more incentives for farmers. Considering these impediments, we must practice a thoughtful approach towards the expansion of bio-based feedstocks.

A new foundation

The realization of this new material milieu will require significant transformation. As David Morris says, “We may be changing the very material foundation of industrial economies.” The carbohydrate economy won’t happen overnight, but it is already underway. Moreover, once this new economy has matured, it will define our future reality. It is therefore important that designers understand the imminent material transformations in order to lead, rather than follow, the inevitable change.

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An age of technology

“In the age of information and technology, material is the most mystic medium to convey the ideas that lie behind and bring it into the world”

In the age of information and technology, material is the most mystic medium to convey the ideas that lie behind and bring it into the world. For example, a curved windshield of the automobile seems to be a simple transparent product, but it is produced by numerous inventions such as pre-polishing of edges, water-repellent surface coating, glass lamination, improvement of de-molding agent, or self-weight-bending technology. The self-weight-bending technology of Central Glass Co., Ltd in Japan is the complicated technology when applied to the laminated glasses.

Because it is quite difficult to bend two sheets of glass simultaneously in the furnace, the micro-sized release agent is needed to let two sheets of glasses slip past each other. By the invention of this agent, layered glasses can then bend themselves according to the distribution of weight units set along their rims, which positions were carefully calculate to realize the ideal convex form. These technologies are totally unseen, but if we lack any of these, the windshield would never be made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7Y0zAzoggY

Another story I like is about the aluminum beer cans, which are produced by “deep draw and iron press” method. When the disks of aluminum get punched in the molding machine, their rims consequently stand and grow to form deep cylinders. The next thing is to cut the edge of the cylinder, to have the joint for the lid. It is good to know that the cylinder is made from the sheet, by employing the malleability of aluminum. This method was originally invented for the bullet cartridge, but now applied for softer metals, with more peaceful usage, with less power of the press.

When I see the continuous corner between the bottom and the side of the beer cans, I always remind of this unspoken process of production. Without it, we will need another joint for the bottom lid like steel cans.

“In that sense, material is a vehicle fulfilled with the “soul” of our contemporary technology”

If you carefully observe designed objects around you, perhaps you may hear the thud sound of the press of aluminum cans, or feel the bending forces of windshield glass in the red-hot furnace. That is why I like materials, which certainly exist in front of me, with the unspoken secrets of their birth. Their ingredients and parts should come from somewhere in this globe, and mixed and combined together in a factory of somewhere, through hands and ideas of somebodies. In that sense, material is a vehicle fulfilled with the “soul” of our contemporary technology.

Confident Approach

If it was 10 years ago, we can conclude that this trend is for the adaptability or changeability, and the materials can be praised with their “capricious” behaviors. But it seems that the materials today are more “confident” for their reason of existence, and can quickly adjust themselves to the surrounding conditions with their ability of self-control. They are phenomena by themselves, and the chance to see their “true” states of being become less and less. That is why contemporary materials attract us, with their mystic characteristics.

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