Innovative Applications in Architecture
Blaine Brownell’s best-selling Transmaterial series has introduced designers to hundreds of emergent materials that have the potential to transform our built environment. In Princeton Architectural Press’ new Architecture Brief, Material Strategies, Brownell shows architects how creative applications of these materials 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.
Editorial Reviews
Surface.com:
“In the increasingly speculative world of digital design and online architecture, Blaine Brownell is a bricks-and-mortar kind of guy. As founding principal of Transstudio, Brownell heads a firm dedicated to emergent materials research, specializing in the development of architecture focused on innovative uses of concrete, glass, wood, metal, and plastic. And in Material Strategies, the author of the Transmaterial series offers another necessary corrective to the fields digital enthusiasts: It’s an ode to buildings blocky and chalky, friable, brassy, and glassy…. Material Strategies is intended not just to reacquaint architects with the nuts and bolts of architecture, but to insist, in the face of the fields digital enthusiasts, that innovation can come not just from a drafting program but from the latent potential found in concrete, glass, masonry, wood, metal, and plastic.”