Challenge
Throughout history, architecture has been shaped by the continual transformation of material technologies and application methods. Its course of development is inseparable from the shifting terrain of technology and the social effects that result. This intrinsic alignment with change—whether from a welcomed or critical perspective—reveals the extent to which architecture is inherently tied to material innovation. Yet despite the broadly appreciated need to transcend convention, specific methodologies for achieving material innovation in design are rarely taught in academia or practice.
Strategy
Material Strategies: Innovative Applications in Architecture is a primer on materials that provides insight into emerging technologies and their creative implementation. Concise chapters based on fundamental material categories describe the basic history of each material, its importance to architecture, and show how materials are applied to affect design. Each chapter closes with case studies of exceptional contemporary buildings that demonstrate the successful realization of material-based innovation. Material Strategies reveals how new materials are utilized to advance the architectural canon—and ultimately illustrates the transformative power of design.
Impact
Based on the book’s suitability for architectural curricula, Princeton Architectural Press decided to publish an electronic book format in addition to the print version. The book received positive reviews in Building Design + Construction, Architectural Products, Surface, Fast Company, Interior Design, and A Daily Dose of Architecture. It was translated into Chinese and published in China in 2015.
Editions
English (print + electronic), Chinese
Selected Citations
Architecture Follows Nature, iMedia, Journal of Cleaner Production, Incorporating Digital Tools with Ceramic Crafting, Architecture and Agriculture, EnviBuild Buildings and Environment, RISD Materials Collection and Curation, MIT DSpace, Structures and Architecture
Selected Reviews
“In each case, fresh technological developments let the architects experiment with the material in a manner that would’ve seemed unimaginable to the concrete dogmatists of yore.” —Fast Company
“In the increasingly speculative world of digital design and online architecture, Blaine Brownell is a bricks-and-mortar kind of guy. As founding principal of Transstudio, Brownell heads a firm dedicated to emergent materials research, specializing in the development of architecture focused on innovative uses of concrete, glass, wood, metal, and plastic. And in Material Strategies, the author of the Transmaterial series offers another necessary corrective to the fields digital enthusiasts: It’s an ode to buildings blocky and chalky, friable, brassy, and glassy.... Material Strategies is intended not just to reacquaint architects with the nuts and bolts of architecture, but to insist, in the face of the field’s digital enthusiasts, that innovation can come not just from a drafting program but from the latent potential found in concrete, glass, masonry, wood, metal, and plastic.”—Surface
“The rate of innovation has greatly accelerated, as have the means of propagating information about new building materials. Here is a survey to bring us up to date.”—Interior Design
“The book is a thoughtful examination of the larger influence of materials and their relationship to culture, behavior, environment and the urban landscape.”—Spacing Vancouver