Healthy Materials Lab is pleased to announce the publication of our first book, Material Health: Design Frontiers.
How do we imagine new practices for architecture and design as we respond to today’s global challenges? Understanding and forefronting Material Health creates healthier futures for everyone. A bright future is on the horizon if we can collectively design new paths forward for the built environments.
How does an understanding of the fundamental issues threatening our planet and human species change the way we practice and teach?
Catalyzing voices from our first symposium Material Health: Design Frontiers, this publication explores the intersectional and complex meaning of health in the material world. We bring together people from a wide range of fields related to design, health, materials, climate change, environmental justice, and innovation to explore and bring definition to the new field of material health. Our intention is to ignite lively conversation, reveal new opportunities and launch ongoing relationships.
“It is time to reassess our material economy by tackling the myriad of crises we face with knowledge, collaboration, and shared energy.” - Martha Lewis
The collection of essays provides a platform to examine critical issues that constitute the burgeoning field of Material Health. We celebrate material innovation, grapple with new and long-sustained challenges in socially engaged research and practice, and critically reflect on necessary changes to architectural and interior design education and practice.
Together, the exceptional perspectives explored in these essays identify viable alternatives and illuminate new paths for architecture and design. From a multi-disciplinary perspective, the book offers an overview of how design shapes our future and how the next decades will radically change through a deeper understanding of the fundamental issues threatening our communities, our planet, and the human species.
“Industrialization and its materials seemed largely to suppress and separate us from nature. Designers today are seeking the reverse: a nature embraced.” - Andrea Lipps
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