Smart Materials and Technologies

* A unique text that outlines the topic of smart materials from a design perspective * Learn about the latest research and practice of using smart materials and gain a better understanding on how to utilize them in architectural design * Benefit from the knowledge and insight of this experienced and respected author team.

Incorporates the relevant information of technologies available to architects and designers. This book presents materials by describing their fundamental characteristics, and identifies and suggests how these same characteristics can be exploited by professionals to achieve their design goals.

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.