Developments in materials present great opportunities to the alert, thinking designer and present great pitfalls to the unwary and ignorant. To use materials intelligently and creatively it is necessary to understand their properties and to adopt a critical, questioning attitude. As in many things lessons can be learnt from history if we are willing to make the effort. Some of these lessons are essentially simple and appear to be common sense after the event and as such may be easily overlooked. A story to conclude.
People have for a long time dreamed of flying under their own power like the birds.
Birds had strong, lightweight hollow bones and membranes of skin and feathers long before the first person powered aeroplane, the Gossamer Condor flew in the late 1970s. It was made of new materials such as aluminium alloy and kevlar, a very efficient, effective and subtle design. It might be argued that the Concorde is an aeronautical dinosaur in danger of becoming extinct. In the same way, perhaps most of our buildings today are inefficient, ineffective dinosaurs and what is lacking is the need to embrace the potentials offered by new materials in a subtle, sensitive design approach. The choice of appropriate materials is influenced by factors which can be conveniently thought of in the three categories of suitability, feasibility and acceptability.