Materials & ProductsExclusive Articles, from ArchDaily

Over the past few decades, interior spaces have become increasingly open and versatile. From the thick walls and multiple subdivisions of Palladian villas, for example, to today's free-standing and multi-functional plans, architecture attempts to combat obsolescence by providing consistently efficient environments for everyday life, considering both present and future use. And while Palladio's old villas can still accommodate a wide variety of functions and lifestyles, re-adapting their use without changing an inch of their original design, today, flexibility seems to be the recipe for extending the useful life of buildings as far as possible.

Nothing is more rational than using the wind, a natural, free, renewable and healthy resource, to improve the thermal comfort of our projects. The awareness of the finiteness of the resources and the demand for the reduction in the energy consumption has removed air-conditioning systems as the protagonist of any project. Architects and engineers are turning to this more passive system to improve thermal comfort. It is evident that there are extreme climates in which there is no escape, or else the use of artificial systems, but in a large part of the terrestrial surface it is possible to provide a pleasant flow of air through the environments by means of passive systems, especially if the actions are considered during the project stage.

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Danish company VELUX began with a belief in building healthier homes. Created over 75 years ago by Villum Kann-Rasmussen, the manufacturer has now expanded around the world, with millions of people getting fresh air and daylight through their products. With recent events on the COVID-19 pandemic, Lone Feifer and Peter Foldbjerg of VELUX explore how architects and designers can find better ways to work at home and create healthy living spaces.

Museums are complex organizations: curators, exhibition designers, conservationists, editors, and marketers have to work together to ensure that artworks in galleries and exhibitions are properly displayed to the public. Instrumental to this process is the use of effective display cases, which must both protect the art and highlight it aesthetically. Below, we delineate some of these visual and practical considerations with photographic examples from Goppion, giving some indication how one should choose which display cases to use.

As people are spending more and more time inside their homes, offices, and other closed areas, it is important to ensure that these spaces are safe and healthy environments, especially indoor areas designed for children and seniors. In recent years, several of the materials that shape the spaces we inhabit and directly influence the quality of the air we breathe have increasingly used a potentially dangerous chemical compound. This compound is called formaldehyde.

As concern grows regarding the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming, solar energy is an increasingly attractive power source due to its zero emissions and infinite supply. As builders turn to incorporate solar energy systems into their projects, many options are available to harness the power of the sun for commercial and industrial installations. While AEC Daily’s course on “The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly” of rooftop solar photovoltaic systems might not be a 1960s spaghetti western, it will guide you through the wild west of installation processes and options.

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With the aim of creating immersive environmental experiences in interior spaces, the design studio Aqua Creations has developed Manta Ray Light, a lighting installation built with responsive RGB LED technology that mixes the colors red, green, and blue to generate more than 16 million light tones. By presetting its color spectrum, offering a range of brightness settings on a scale of 0.1 to 100%, and even loading images and videos into its internal memory, the system allows its user to add color and movement to expressive spaces, or deliver a feeling of warmth and concentration to intimate and private rooms.

Introduced by Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf pedagogy draws on the principles of anthroposophical philosophy. One of the theory's foundational characteristics is its holistic approach to the human being: feelings, imagination, spirit, and intellect are considered unique to every individual, and thoughts, feelings, and actions are understood to always be linked.

If you don't like a specific musical style, the theater bores you, or you're not attracted to works of art, you can almost always avoid them. Architecture, however, is different. A poorly thought-out project will affect the lives of many people consistently and for a long time. With interiors, this effect is even more amplified. Humanity is spending more and more time indoors, which directly impacts our well-being and health. In periods of compulsory retirement, as in the current pandemic of Covid-19, we gain a sense of how important interior spaces are for our well-being and even for the prevention of diseases. Designing an indoor environment is a huge responsibility for a professional. An interior designer must plan, research, coordinate, and manage these projects to obtain an adequately healthy and aesthetically pleasing environment for the people who use the space. But what, in fact, is interior design?

In 2018, the UN released an article stating that 55% of the world’s population already lived in urban areas, predicting that by 2050 this percentage would reach 68%. This trend toward greater urbanization carries with it several implications regarding environmental degradation and social inequality. According to National Geographic, urban growth increases air pollution, endangers animal populations, promotes the loss of urban tree cover, and heightens the likelihood of environmental catastrophes such as flash flooding. These health hazards and catastrophic phenomena may be more likely to impact poorer populations, as larger cities tend to demonstrate higher rates of economic inequality and uncontrolled growth tends to produce unequal distributions of space, services, and opportunities.

To mitigate these negative effects of urbanization, designers are increasingly prioritizing sustainability and the maximization of available space – allowing more people to occupy less space with a smaller footprint.

The Coronavirus pandemic has been taking over the news for a few months now, and has imposed unimaginable changes on the daily lives of the world’s entire population. Although the situation is worrying, and rather devastating in some cases, being aware of the virus's behavior and understanding ways to avoid it seems to be the best way to deal with the crisis. COVID-19 is a respiratory disease that spreads through droplets in the air. What makes it especially dangerous is its high rate of contagion, as the virus has the ability to survive outside the human body, in the air, and on surfaces such as metal, glass and plastics, if they were not properly disinfected. But how does the virus behave on each of these materials? [Latest Update: July, 2020]

It may sound like a silly rhyme, but it’s true: wood is good. As a construction material, wood is beautiful, practical, and versatile. The great strength, light weight, and excellent insulating properties of wood make it ideal for many applications, especially at a time when timber is delivering efficient solutions at different scales. Despite these benefits, wood is highly susceptible to decay, especially when used outdoors.

At the apogee of the Roman Empire, its territory extended over more than five million square kilometers, between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Rome exercised power over a population of more than 70 million people, which equated to roughly 21% of the world population at the time. In fact, as we have already shown in another article, all roads led to the city of Rome. The great seat of the empire and the material and immaterial heritage left by it is immeasurable, and even today researchers seek to understand its full impact on the current world. From the beginning of its expansion in the 6th century BC until its fall in the year 476 AD, the legacy left by the Romans encompasses areas such as law, plastic arts, Latin (which originated many different languages), systems of government, and, importantly, architecture.

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Insufficiently regulated in much of the world, the fire resistance of glass is an important issue that is often poorly resolved, endangering people's lives. What characteristics must a glass have to resist a fire? What options are there to choose from? We talked with the experts of Cristales Dialum to investigate these essential questions.

Craftmanship is back. Following a century of mass production and industrial development, crafts are starting to be revalued and reinterpreted. A new sensitivity towards raw materials, the recovery of local techniques and the defense of small-scale trade are a few of the claims that this comeback represents. Materials such as earth and ceramics, textiles and wood are being reinterpreted by designers, artists, and architects around the world, in search of both their own style and the representation of collective nostalgia.

Color-tunable lighting is an exciting and relatively new lighting technology that allows users to control the color of light anytime after installation and attune lighting to individual preferences or specific application needs.

Door handles are a ubiquitous part of daily life, being used constantly in almost every space but rarely given thought by the passing user. Nevertheless, the chosen material of each handle can vary widely in terms of aesthetics, durability, and sustainability, with good choices going noticeably right and poor choices going noticeably wrong. For objects that are seen and used multiple times every day without fail, it’s imperative that designers get the choice right.

Kengo Kuma's architecture can be defined by its respect to Japanese constructive traditions and alignment with its context. Internationally recognized, the architect is known mainly for his wooden (or mixed) structures, which arise from a simple pattern of assembly and, which through different intersections and angles, generate a complex whole. The representations created by his team bring very specific details, ranging from didactic isometrics to complex parametric drawings. We have gathered details of five inspiring projects by Kengo Kuma that use wood.