Smart Materials and Technologies: For the Architecture and Design Professions - Tapa dura

“[S]eeks to give architects and designers a better understanding of some of the breathtaking new technologies becoming available so that they can be applied to the best advantage. Addington and Schodek...want to make sure that these technologies are designed into buildings in a thoughtful way. Indeed, they spent 10 years researching and writing the book. The presentation is tailored to design professionals and includes equations and a fair amount of technical detail, but the authors don't get so far into the nitty-gritty as to go beyond what designers need to know. Smart Materials and Technologies fills a void in the literature and may help a great many designers and architects develop buildings that are more useful to an even greater number of occupants.” - Civil Engineering

“This book, while offering a primer for understanding of materials, focusing particularly on contemporary materials, also promotes a revision of our thinking as design professionals.” - Journal of Architectural Education

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.