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 field’s digital enthusiasts: It's an ode to buildings blocky and chalky, friable, brassy, and glassy.

Korean Pavilion in Shanghai, China. Mass Studies, 2010.

“Despite the broadly appreciated need to transcend convention,” Brownell writes, “specific methodologies for achieving material innovation in design are rarely taught in academia or practice.” The knowledge and appreciation of the actual stuff of the building trade has fallen by the wayside, he argues, as designers have come to rely more and more on computer-assisted design as a means of discovering new conceptual and formal approaches. As such, Material Strategies is intended not just to reacquaint architects with the nuts and bolts of architecture, but to insist, in the face of the field’s 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.

Armani Fifth Avenue New York. Massimiliano & Doriana Fuksas, 2009.

Each chapter is dedicated to one or the other of these materials, along with illustrated examples of recent applications—all since 2005—that show what a given material can do when pushed to its maximum capacity. The Korean Pavilion at the Shanghai expo, by Mass Studies, demonstrates the intricacy and delicacy of modern steel, while Massimiliano & Doriana Fuksas’s Armani showroom on Fifth Avenue illustrates how plastic can suggest not just ductility but richness and luxury. The book’s emphasis on technical aspects like tensile strength, annealing, sulfides, and carbonate makes it less of a beach read, but as a quick refresher on recent developments in building techniques, it’s a handy handbook for any fan of contemporary design.

Transstudio
Title image: Chokkura Plaza and Shelter, Tochigi, Japan. Kengo Kuma & Associates, 2006.