Material health is important for every designer, no matter if we specify construction and building materials, finishes for interiors, or ancillary items like furniture and equipment. Information about products and various types of material properties, including their impacts on health, is becoming more prominent. However, lack of guidelines and potential tools that could help us access this data makes the process of material and product search unintuitive for designers.
Knowing this, how can we make our research of material health, a subject essential to our practice and commitments as a firm, more natural, self-expanding and intuitive? This study applies findings found in different case studies and research to ultimately develop tools, such as a material database and improved material libraries, to facilitate integration of material research and design process.
This article originally appeared in Vol 09.02 of the Perkins+Will Research Journal. CLICK HERE to see the whole article.
