Transstudio

Blaine Brownell will give the keynote luncheon lecture at the Architect magazine R+D Symposium in Chicago on Thursday, September 23, 2010: Materials Innovation: At the forefront of building product science “Blaine Brownell, author of the popular Transmaterial series of books, head of the design/research firm Transstudio, and assistant professor at the College of Design at [...]

Blaine Brownell will give a lecture about emergent material technologies at The College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University in Shanghai at 6:30 pm on Monday, May 24, 2010. The talk will be followed by a discussion with architecture students about potential material applications in China.

This month’s A+U journal adopts the theme of “Materials / Treatments” in the study of international contemporary architecture and design. Sauerbruch Hutton, Foreign Office Architects, Asymptote, Eduardo Souto de Moura, David Chipperfield, and Chuck Hoberman are included in the list of creative practices currently conducting robust experiments in material applications. The essay “Testing Ground: Emergent [...]

This week marks the publication of Transmaterial 3: A Catalog of Materials that Redefine our Physical Environment, by Princeton Architectural Press. Since the 2006 publication of the best-selling first volume, the Transmaterial series has aimed to inspire architects and designers looking to transform the structure, spaces, and surfaces of their projects with the latest high-tech [...]

The new year often brings a chance to reflect, prompting us to make lists about past milestones. However, since I am usually more interested in what the future holds, I would like to offer my own list about emerging trends in materials. The following list appears on the Architect website, featuring five of the most [...]

Light is essential to the realization of architecture, yet in the process of design and construction it is commonly an afterthought. Not only is the source of light important for the quality of illumination within a space, but also the materials used to capture, filter, and redirect the light. An installation at the University of [...]

One decade ago, Japan-based architecture magazine SD published a special issue on new materials entitled “Alluring Materiality.” For its ten-year anniversary, the original editorial team reconvened to produce another issue reflecting upon recent material progress, and invited Blaine Brownell to be a co-editor. The anniversary issue was recently published by Kajima Institute Publishing Co. The [...]

Blaine Brownell lectured in the 2009-2010 Design Matters lecture series at the University of Illinois. The program concerns the synergistic interrelationships between design, engineering, technology, and business in the creation of innovative and successful products, services and experiences.

Transstudio’s Bridge Tower proposal was featured in the September/October 2009 issue of Fabric Architecture magazine. The project proposes an urban-scaled “cloak” comprised of intelligent thermal skins that optimize energy performance in existing buildings economically while transforming their potential uses. The proposal is an effort meant to sideline such teardown and rebuild tactics and introduce a [...]

Blaine Brownell gave the first talk of the Rice School of Architecture fall 2009 lecture series. Brownell was introduced by Associate Professor Dawn Finley of Interloop-Architecture, and his talk was entitled “Material Futures: Thresholds and Potentialities.”