You may have surmised that I spend a not inconsiderable amount of time scouring the Interwebs looking for the latest and greatest materials with which to regale all of you intrepid readers.  Many of the websites I visit tend to tag their posts about architecture projects by material.  The upshot of all of this tagging is that it becomes possible to sort or search these sites by material and as a consequence to encounter lovely, intriguing projects (and also heinous, unspeakable projects) that feature the material in which one may have an interest.  I’ve provided a few links to these sites and a brief description of their general content below.  If you know of any more like these, please leave a link in the comments!

By the way, ARCHITERIALS can also be searched by tags – look for the amazing tag cloud in the sidebar if you have flash, and for the less amazing tag list if you do not.

ARCHITIZER

“Architizer is a new way for architects to interact, show their work, and find clients. It is an open community created by architects for architects. One architectural project has dozens of contributors, from the intern who made the conceptual models to the construction administrator. A project on Architizer links all members of the architectural community.”

I tend to think of Architizer as a kind of portfolio-driven facebook/linked-in hybrid for Architect types.  If you scroll down the homepage past a slightly slow to load map, you will find a block titled “Materials” just above one called “Suppliers” where all the tags are listed.  These allow you to sort through projects by, you guessed it, material or vendor.  They’ve got an informative blog going as well, which is highly enjoyable.

ARCHDAILY

“ArchDaily was founded in March 2008 with the one mission of delivering the most complete information to architects around the world; every week, every day, every hour, every moment: as soon as it is happening. It is the online source of continuous information for a growing community of thousands of architects searching for the latest architectural news: projects, products, events, interviews and competitions among others.”

Here again you can sort blog posts by keyword, and although the keyword section is not particularly materials-centric, the cloud contains generic material related keywords.  Scrolling down and looking to the “Browse By Category” section, you will find the helpful “Building Technology and Materials Category” for your delectation.

OPEN BUILDINGS

Open Buildings is a “crowd sourced global directory of buildings” with a corresponding iPhone App.  You can use the app to find buildings that have been submitted to the site while you are on the go.  It’s also possible to visit their website and sort the projects that are featured there by material; simply navigate to the search page and scroll down until you see “by material” on the side of the page.

 Please enjoy searching through projects by material, and do let me know if you have other sources!