Here in the northern hemisphere (especially here in the lower latitudes) Winter is receding and Spring is hopping in on little rabbit feet.  What this means, of course, is that we’re all sneezing, snuffling, and sniffling due to the staggering amount of pollen flying around in the air we breathe.  Through a fuzzy haze of allergy medication, my itchy red eyes are finally able to gaze at blooming flowers and gorgeous green leaves emerging at last from miniscule buds on tree branches.  The leaves are gearing up to perform the hard work of converting light energy into food – a task they …

In ninth grade English class I was forced to read a book called Frankenstein, which I found horrifying not only because it chronicled the slow march to destruction of a hideous, emotionally overwrought monster created out of various bits and pieces of the recently deceased, but also because the denouement takes place up at the north pole. In my imagination the north pole is bitterly cold and dark, full of craggy icebergs, ancient snow, and super predators including walruses with pointy tusks, hungry polar bears, and ferocious cold-adapted velociraptors.

Image courtesy mirror.uncyc.org
In the case of Frankenstein’s monster, manufacturing a …

Sometimes I think that discarded plastic bags have the same kind of dangerous beauty as poisonous tree frogs, toxic waste, or Courtney Love. Have you ever spotted a lone grocery store bag tumbling down the road or lodged in the topmost branches of a tree? They tend to billow and pulse with currents of air, and to produce subtle crackling noises like a slow-burning fire. But most of the time I don’t feel poetic, and it just seems like trash is everywhere around us and I grow disheartened.

Image courtesy dartfrog.co.uk
As it turns out, there …

When you’re a designer, having problems can be a good thing. Well, I suppose I ought to be clear that I am talking about certain kinds of problems (for example, not even one of Jay-Z’s 99 problems would qualify). FORM US WITH LOVE, a design collective based in Sweden, turned a problem they were having with an echoing studio space into a partnership with a woodwool cement manufacturer. Träullit is a 20-man factory located in Österbymo, “little more than a fleck on the map between Stockholm and Malmö” and it’s the only manufacturer of woodwool cement …

Yesterday I was trying to accomplish something of vital importance on the Internet when I was stopped short in my digital tracks, having discovered to my shock and horror that I would be compelled to give my email address in order to cast a vote for some friends attempting to win a Crate & Barrell “ultimate dream wedding” competition.
Worried that I would become the recipient of incessant emails extolling the merit of elegant crystal decanters and pithy advice on how to choose the perfect shrimp fork, I decided to give out my fifteen-year old aol email address (which I have pretty much completely surrendered to …

To me a solar cell is kind of like a Lamborghini: difficult to acquire, difficult to maintain, and unless you’re extremely lucky, only semi-functional. Today’s solar cells only convert a small percentage of the energy from the sun into electricity, and that’s before they get dirty.  “It’s challenging to get high efficiencies of conversion. For example, the basic single junction solar cell is fundamentally limited to an efficiency of 30 percent. So, if you made a perfect solar cell, the highest efficiency would be 30 percent. Currently, manufacturing cells with anything near that …

I grew up in Northern California, and I suppose I like the look of structures clad in wood because they’re comfortable and familiar. Wood works wonderfully in that earthquake-riddled part of the country because it’s flexible and can handle the forces imparted by the occasional seismic event better than a brick facade.  Brick is great, but it can’t be denied that it will undergo a complete nervous breakdown when placed under unusual stress. More often than not, wood faced with lateral forces takes a deep breath, squares its shoulders, and carries on with the vital business of protecting building interiors …

Every once in a while I like to find out about a new way to use a very old material, like brick for instance. Human beings have been working with brick at least since the times when the flooding of the Euphrates might engender the total destruction of the walls Gilgamesh built around his city, so the material definitely qualifies as ancient.  And I found out about a rather interesting way that a Dutch company, Tiger Stone, has been laying brick: they are rolling roads out like carpet.

I have no idea …

ARCHITERIALS is a year old now, and like most healthy, well-adjusted one-year-olds it needs to be changed constantly, crawls all over my apartment, and makes strange burbling noises.  No, really – it does.  It’s terrifying.
Over the past year I’ve profiled approximately 65 materials and learned about blogging, bacteria, and biscuits, although I must confess that the biscuts were a side project.  A delicious, buttery side project.  Anyhow, to celebrate the birthday of ARCHITERIALS and the fact that the tagline “Investigating architectural materials since 2010” has finally attained temporal legitimacy, I’ve compiled for this, …

Think of public restrooms as the Arctic expedition, Sahara desert traverse, or trek through the Amazon of architecture; the public restroom is one of those extreme environments where you plan for the worst and hope for the best.  Your typical public toilet faces all possible byproducts of humankind, harsh chemical cleaners, random acts of vandalism, water, fungus, insects, rodents, and the full spectrum of microorganisms.  Ceramic materials are specified in public restrooms because smooth glazed surfaces are easier to keep clean and damaged tiles can be replaced without too much trouble, but the chemicals required to sanitize public …