Smart Materials And New Technologies

Today, architects and designers are beginning to look toward developments in new "smart" or "intelligent" materials and technologies for solutions to long-standing problems in building design. However, these new materials have so far been applied in a diverse but largely idiosyncratic nature, because relatively few architects have access to information about the types or properties of these new materials or technologies. Two of the leading experts in this field - Addington and Schodek - have solved this problem by incorporating all the relevant information of all the latest technologies available to architects and designers in this one volume. They present materials by describing their fundamental characteristics, and go on to identify and suggest how these same characteristics can be exploited by professionals to achieve their design goals. Here, the wealth of technical understanding already available in the materials science and engineering literature is at last made accessible to a design audience.

Today, architects are looking for new solutions to old problems, including 'smart' and 'intelligent' materials that can be applied to building design. This text covers the use of smart materials in a design perspective, as well as describing how these solutions could be utilised in other applications.

This handbook brings together technical expertise, conceptual background, applications, and societal aspects of Industry 4.0: the evolution of automation and data exchange in fabrication technologies, materials processing, and device manufacturing at both experimental and theoretical model scales. The book assembles all the aspects of Industry 4.0, starting from the emergence of the concept to the consequences of its progression. Drawing on expert contributors from around the world, the volume details the technologies that sparked the fourth revolution and illustrates their characteristics, potential, and methods of use in the industrial and societal domains. In addition, important topics such as ethics, privacy and security are considered in a reality where all data is shared and saved remotely. The collection of contribution serve a very broad audience working in the fields of science and engineering, chemical engineering, materials science, nanotechnology, energy, environment, green chemistry, sustainability, electrical and electronic engineering, solid-state physics, surface science, aerosol technology, chemistry, colloid science, device engineering, and computer technology. This handbook ideal reference libraries in universities and industrial institutions, government and independent institutes, individual research groups and scientists.

This book considers the potential of new, smart materials and their use in architecture. It begins with an overview of current global tendencies (technological, demographic, and socio-anthropological) and their relevance for architectural design. Expanding upon approaches for flexible design solutions to address change and uncertainty, Dr. Kretzer begins by exploring adaptive architecture and proceeds to introduce the topic of “information materials,” which encompasses smart and functional materials, their current usage, and their potential for the creation of future spaces. The second chapter provides a comprehensive overview of architectural materials, past and present, split into the topics: natural, industrial, synthetic, digital, and information materials. Chapter three introduces an educational approach for the mediation of information material usage in design courses and student workshops. The final section provides detailed information on a range of emerging material phenomena, including aerogels, bioluminescence, bio plastics, dye-sensitized solar cells, electroluminescent displays, electroactive polymers, soft robotics, and thermochromics. Each section explains its respective history, working principles, fabrication and (potential) usage in architecture and design, and provides hands-on tutorials on how to self-produce these materials, and displays class-tested experimental installations. The book concludes with an outlook into the domain of synthetic biology and the prospects of a “living” architecture. It is ideal for students of structural materials engineering, architecture, and urban planning; professionals working these in areas, as well as materials science/engineering and architecture educators.

From the visionary founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, a manifesto for the dawning age of active materials Things in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Personal items deteriorate. Yet today's researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that physically sense, adapt, and fall together instead of apart. These materials open new directions for industrial innovation and challenge us to rethink the way we build and collaborate with our environment. Things Fall Together is a provocative guide to this emerging, often mind-bending reality, presenting a bold vision for harnessing the intelligence embedded in the material world. Drawing on his pioneering work on self-assembly and programmable material technologies, Skylar Tibbits lays out the core, frequently counterintuitive ideas and strategies that animate this new approach to design and innovation. From furniture that builds itself to shoes printed flat that jump into shape to islands that grow themselves, he describes how matter can compute and exhibit behaviors that we typically associate with biological organisms, and challenges our fundamental assumptions about what physical materials can do and how we can interact with them. Intelligent products today often rely on electronics, batteries, and complicated mechanisms. Tibbits offers a different approach, showing how we can design simple and elegant material intelligence that may one day animate and improve itself—and along the way help us build a more sustainable future. Compelling and beautifully designed, Things Fall Together provides an insider's perspective on the materials revolution that lies ahead, revealing the spectacular possibilities for designing active materials that can self-assemble, collaborate, and one day even evolve and design on their own.

The use of smart materials in architecture is a dynamic and innovative area merging research, development, and use. Smart materials, with their reversible characteristics, respond to stimuli such as light, temperature, and electrical field by changing their form,color,viscosity, etc. One of the most fascinating developments is the advent of Phase Change Materials. These materials make it possible, for example, to develop self-acting, kinetic facades and wallpaper that changes its color and pattern based on temperature and light. The book presents the development of these materials and also describes their use in the contexts of architecture, design, and art. It offers a systematic overview with a detailed discussion of properties, technologies, products, and projects based on twenty groups of smart materials.

This book presents a design-driven investigation into smart materials developed by chemists, physicists, materials and chemical engineers, and applied by designers to consumer products, buildings, interfaces, or textiles. Introducing a class of smart materials (referred to as stimuli-responsive, morphing or kinetic materials) that move and change their shape in response to stimuli, the book presents their characteristics, advantages, potentials, as well as the difficulties involved in their application. The book also presents a large number of case studies on products, projects, concepts, and experiments employing smart materials, thus mapping out new design territories for these innovative materials. The case studies involve different fields of design, including product, interior, fashion, and communication design. Reflecting the growing demand for sustainable and human-centered design agendas, the book explores and reveals the role and influence of these new materials and technologies on design and human experience, and discusses how they can be used to redefine our objects and spaces so as to promote more resilient environments. The book offers an intriguing and valuable resource for design professionals, engineers, scientists and students alike.