Seetal Solanki

This visually stunning investigation of natural and man-made materials will change the way you look at the world around you, while offering hope for the future of our planet. What does it mean to live in a material world, and how do materials of the past and present hold the keys to our future? This book tackles these questions by focusing on various issues that human beings face and by discussing potential materials-related solutions. Through the lens of intriguing projects by designers, artists, makers, and scientists, it presents a colorful panoply of ideas, technologies, and creative efforts that focus on the earth's most basic elements, while also showing how these elements can be transformed into entirely new materials. It explores, for example, how ancient practices such as dyeing fabric and making glue may hold the secret to renewable and earth-friendly consumer products, as well as how recycling plastics can tackle food waste, and how a type of light metal being developed may one day make air travel less fuel-reliant. This book also investigates the potential of the digital experience, suggesting how this most ephemeral type of matter can be used to improve our world. Eye-catching and provocative, Why Materials Matter serves as both a stimulating catalog of possibilities and a timely manifesto on how to consume, manufacture, and design for a better future.

The Past, Present and Future of the Material World

Why Materials Matter

Joasia Fidler-Wieruszewska

In fact, most of the time we ignore materials. Their ubiquity is precisely the reason it's so easy to forget just how foundational a role they play in our experience of the world

As avid inventors and consumers of gadgets, we talk a lot about the role technology plays in our lives and how those who shape it shape society. What we forget is that, in equal measure, so too do those who participate in the development of materials. It is precisely for this reason that materials demand special attention in the present moment. The field of materials is expanding at a rate faster than we can study (let alone master), with a recent estimate counting over 160,000 unique materials in the world. What's more, when we begin to study a material, we're immediately launched into an ever more complicated system of scales and structures. It's by looking at a material across these different scales - the nano, micro, meso and macro - that we can begin to understand its molecular makeup, mechanical properties and experiential qualities. Complexity at this order of magnitude defies any single way of knowing. Rather, it necessitates an array of techniques, from computational modelling and measuring, to experimental trial and error, to sensing and observation.

We're quickly moving into a world where the challenges and desires we're trying to address are far too complicated for researchers in any single subject area at any single scale to resolve. The skill of the twenty-first century's great thinkers will not be cleverness in one particular discipline, but rather knowing how to use materials as a bridge between disciplines. As a global society, we're going to need lots of people with different skills to tackle the complex issues that face us today. The power of materials is that they transcend the boundaries of multiple disciplines. They can act as a catalyst for bringing diverse groups of agents together, whether it be engineers, designers, architects, biologists, botanists, farmers, environmentalists or anthropologists.

 I have therefore purposely not used the words 'sustainable' or 'innovation' in this book. I believe in a more 'responsible' approach, because it feels a lot more achievable: 'sustainable' can often give the impression that taking the environment into account is someone else's responsibility. 

Overlaps between them prove that borrowing from other sectors and sharing techniques can help us progress towards a responsible future that is more accepting of an interdisciplinary design approach. By looking at materials' potential we can shape new meanings, with positive social, environmental, economic and political effects. 

The familiarity of trees and the ways they are commonly used perhaps makes it difficult for us to think about them in an unpredictable way.

In fact, G.FSmith's ultimate aim is not to reduce the amount of post-consumer coffee cup waste by converting it into a desirable paper stock, but to get to a point where Extract paper can be discontinued because people stop using disposable coffee cups entirely.

 Hoyt views his pieces as art objects masquerading as functional objects, contributing to the ongoing popular debate about whether certain kinds of work should be categorised as art or design. 

The immense influence and power of the fashion industry - one of the largest in the world - means it has enormous potential to positively impact society. Williams's work explores how the fashion system can be made more responsible by considering provenance, local communities, wider society and the environment. With Breadline, she has used fashion not just to contribute charitably to a particular community, but as a platform to discuss the UK's food insecurity crisis.

By placing importance on aesthetics, too, she encourages a more conscious approach to consumption.

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