Transstudio

Blaine Brownell’s new book, Material Strategies: Innovative Applications in Architecture, has just been published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Brownell wrote the Transmaterial series to introduce readers to hundreds of emergent materials that have the potential to transform the built environment. Now, Material Strategies shows architects how creative applications of these materials can achieve such transformations. Chapters based on fundamental material categories examine historical precedents, current opportunities, and future environmental challenges. Case studies featuring detailed illustrations showcase pioneering buildings from today’s most forward-thinking architectural firms.

Material Strategies is not a typical how-to manual that teaches known standards and methods for using construction materials, but rather a guide that reveals approaches necessary to transcend convention and achieve material innovation in architecture.

If there were any doubt about the viability of the tall building after the 9/11 attacks, it no longer exists. Five skyscrapers surpassing the 415- and 417-meter core heights of the original World Trade Center towers have been constructed since 2001, including the Burj Khalifa, which, at a breathtaking 828 meters, is presently the world’s tallest building. The uses of tall structures are also becoming more varied. Of the supertall structures currently under way, two have been designed for infrastructural purposes. As these monumental works of engineering emerge, it is important to assess the role of architecture in their designs.

Blaine Brownell will lecture about biomimetic materials and design applications at the 1st Wyss Adaptive Architecture Workshop entitled “Buildings Inspired by Nature: Inventing the Future Built Environment,” sponsored by the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. This event is envisaged as a first step towards catalyzing the application of revolutionary advances in biology, materials science, and nanotechnology to architectural challenges, and mapping out strategies to develop new commercial products for the built environment. The workshop will explore emerging frontiers between science and architecture, and will take place on Friday, September 16, 2011.

Blaine Brownell will give the keynote lecture at the Resiliency of the National Building Inventory Workshop at the University of Southern California on September 13, 2011. The purpose of the workshop is to characterize the condition of the existing building inventory within the United States and to prepare a roadmap that serves the public and private sectors with planning for impacts due to demographic, economic, and societal trends on the built environment. The workshop will consider the capacity of existing building inventory to support current and future urbanization trends, with high performance and resiliency considered key components of the discussion.

In order to surmise the extent of a problem, a little homework is typically required. In the case of material resources, for example, it is common knowledge that material consumption and disposal can have far-reaching environmental, social, and economic consequences. But it is difficult to comprehend the full repercussions of material use, given the complexity and vast spatiotemporal scales of global material flows.

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami and nuclear disaster that hit Japan last March created an unthinkable tragedy that devastated Japan’s northern Tohoku region. According to the Japanese National Police Agency, the triple-sided cataclysm killed more than 15,000 people, displacing some 100,000 children, and caused tens of billions of US dollars in damage.

Although Japan is no stranger to seismic events, the Tohoku catastrophe was Japan’s largest known earthquake, and one of the five most powerful earthquakes in recorded world history. Despite Japan’s familiarity with devastation and reconstruction – consider the 1923 Kanto earthquake, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – there remain fundamental differences of opinion regarding the appropriate way to rebuild. The greatest argument concerns whether to emphasize a centralized or dispersed model of population distribution.

Synthetic materials play increasingly complex roles in prosthetic applications. In a recent paper published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, a team from Brown University describes its development of a process to modify the surface of titanium leg implants to accelerate skin-cell growth.

Japanese approaches to light have long fascinated Western audiences. Novelist Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 book In Praise of Shadows articulated the unique qualities of Japanese light found within the shadowy recesses of traditional Japanese dwellings. Tanizaki claimed that the Japanese approach to illumination prioritized subtlety, smoothness, and depth—in contrast with the West’s stark treatment of light. In today’s variegated design culture, contemporary Japanese designers explore light in myriad ways, but this subtle and meaningful treatment of light remains a principal characteristic of Japanese design and architecture. The following themes of atmosphere, integration, dematerialization, and emanation describe common approaches used by Japanese designers who are particularly adept at harnessing the complex interplay between light and material.

Fabric is one of the oldest materials humans have used for shelter; it remains an important material with diverse applications in design and construction today, and it will play an even more important role in the constructed environment in the future.

Predictions of energy scarcity and resource depletion, exacerbated by the burgeoning middle class in developing countries like China and India, point to ensuing decades of high commodity prices and fuel shortages. In these circumstances, existing resources and structures will be valued more highly, and traditional, energy-intensive practices like “raze and rebuild”—in which buildings are demolished to make way for others—will be less attractive. Instead, architects and builders will have to be more resourceful in their treatment of existing contexts and materials.

The massive tornadoes that hit the southern U.S. this spring left more than ruined neighborhoods in their wake. Questions about climate change have resurfaced, as has speculation about how to prepare for future disasters. The frequency and severity of natural disasters is sound cause for concern. “By now, most people get that you can’t attribute any single weather event on global warming,” Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told The Dallas Morning News. “But some thing are clear: Temperatures have been going up, and models all agree that the temperature rise will continue unless we get some massive volcanic eruptions or the sun suddenly becomes much dimmer.”