Innovative Materials: The Latest Architecture and News

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Wooden floors are know for their warm appearance, rich texture, and natural tones that vary according to the origin of the planks, changing with the weather and the passage of time. Outdoors, wooden surfaces are widely used for terraces and living areas, taking advantage of these inviting qualities to bring people together on warm and welcoming floors. Built with modular pieces, wooden decks can easily form artificial topographies, shaping creative and effective public spaces for rest, sports, games, and collective gathering.

Ranging from yellow, to gray, to traditional red and orange, bricks are ubiquitous in many of our cities and widely used in construction. Briefly, the manufacturing process of traditional bricks involves molding clay and firing it in ovens, facilitating the creation of solid blocks, perforated blocks, cobogós, tiles, and other shapes. Ceramic bricks are inexpensive; easy to find; boast strong resistance, thermal inertia, and finish; and do not require such specialized labor for construction. But if the installation is done near sources of high heat, the common brick will end up cracking and breaking, making refractory bricks more suitable. But what does that mean?

For centuries, physical modeling has been a staple of architectural education and practice. Allowing the designer and client to explore a scheme in plan, elevation, and perspective all at once, the physical model aims to simulate the spatial relationship between volumes and to understand constructive systems. 

Even in an age of ultra-high quality rendering, and virtual reality, physical material models represent a beloved, tried and tested method of conveying ideas both during the design process and at presentation stage. Whether through a rapid, five-minute volumetric test of paper models, or a carefully sculpted timber construction detail, careful choice of material can greatly assist the modeling process, allowing designers to remain abstract, or test physical properties of structural systems.

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Bamboo is an ancient building material that has been used in a variety of countries and building types. A sustainable material with a unique aesthetic, it is arguably one of the greatest architectural trends of the moment.

This material's structural and sustainable qualities demonstrate that bamboo can be three times more resistant than steel and grow about 4 feet (1.22 meter) in just one day.

The Ochoalcubo project, a pioneering experiment led by the entrepreneur and architecture lover Eduardo Godoy that seeks to unite leading Chilean and Japanese architecture practices with ground-breaking architecture, has started a new phase. Made up of 8 phases which involve 8 different architects, the first stage of this architecture laboratory took place in Marbella and included work from Christian de Groote, Mathias Klotz, Cristián Valdés, José Cruz, Teodoro Fernández, Cecilia Puga, Smiljan Radic and Sebastián Irarrázabal. Toyo Ito was the first international figure to participate in the project with the construction of the White O House in 2009.

Stone is elemental to our built world. It is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) materials used in man-made habitats. The sense of timelessness in stone is attributed to its long and varied history alongside architecture. From ancient monoliths to cities to houses, the diversity of stone means that it can be used to convey a variety of expressions. Carved, polished, sedimented, stacked, preserved - the list can go on and on. The feeling stone conveys in contemporary projects usually brings with it a sense of place – a raw materiality when paired with timber or other natural materials. With that in mind, check out these 6 details of projects that stand out for their use of stone: