Imagine: a hurricane is barreling towards your house, but instead of hiding in the basement, you can stay safely and comfortably in your living room, all thanks to your X-Flex Blast Protection System wallpaper. It’s not a fantasy; the wallpaper, invented by Berry Plastics in a partnership with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, actually exists — and a single sheet is strong enough to stop a wrecking ball.

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Post tags: bomb, building material, green design, natural disasters, New Materials, sustainable design, wallpaper, wrecking ball, xflex

Recent RPI Masters of Architecture graduate Henry Miller has devised a way to reuse waste plastic as an aggregate in cement, circumventing the energy-intensive process of plastic recycling. By grinding up landfill-bound plastic and mixing it with portland cement, Miller was able to create a material just as strong as traditional concrete made with mined aggregate. The ingenious solution netted miller first place in the “Component Category” of the second annual Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World competition.

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Post tags: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, building materials, concrete, Henry Miller, Plastic Aggregate Concrete, Plastic Concrete, Portland Cement Association, Recycled Concrete, Recycled Materials, RPI

StrawJet, of Ashland, Oregon, has developed a unique process for the creation of structural building components from a variety of waste agricultural stalks. Essentially, they have created a machine that takes waste stalks and creates a tightly wrapped beam which can then be applied to many different facets of construction. The cables are made and wrapped without glues, resins or chemicals and are made completely from waste material. As long as we are growing food there will be straw, so why not use it creatively?

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Post tags: CASBA, Green Building, Malawi, natural building, reuse, SOAIA, Straw Building, StrawJet, Sustainable Building, Waste Straw

Buildings account for thirty-eight percent of the CO2 emissions in the U.S., according to the U.S. Green Building Council, and demand for carbon neutral and/or zero footprint buildings is at an all-time high. Now there is a new building material that is not just carbon neutral, but is actually carbon negative. Developed by U.K.-based Lhoist Group, Tradical® Hemcrete® is a bio-composite, thermal walling material made from hemp, lime and water. What makes it carbon negative? There is more CO2 locked-up in the process of growing and harvesting of the hemp than is released in the production of the lime binder. Of course the equation is more complicated than that, but Hemcrete® is still an amazing new technology that could change the building industry.

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Post tags: Architecture, building materials, carbon negative concrete, concrete, Green Building, green design, hemcrete, sustainable design, tradical

We use it to build bridges, roads, sidewalks, and just about every structure relies on concrete for its base – wouldn’t it be wonderful if cement actually negated CO2 emissions instead of creating more? Well, now it can! Novacem, a fresh new startup company has actually concocted a cement that eats up carbon as it hardens! And with an annual production of more than 2.5 billion tons, can you imagine what kind of impact it would have if all the cement we used could do what Novacem’s green cement does?

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Post tags: carbon eating cement, CO2 emissions, eco cement, gloabl warming, green cement, green construction, novacem, Portland cement

With major auto manufactures rushing to green their upcoming vehicle lines as quickly as possible, Ford Motor Company has announced that it is researching an innovative material that may one day become as ubiquitous as plastic – liquid wood! The material is derived from waste wood, can be molded into different shapes, and the best news is that according to Ford, it is almost carbon neutral.

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Post tags: biodegradable materials, ford, green building materials, green design, Green Transportation, liquid wood cars, sustainable design

Civil engineers at MIT are currently exploring ways to create concrete with reduced creep that will be able to last for 16,000 years. Concrete is one of the most frequently used and widely produced man-made building materials on earth, with over 20 billion tons produced per year globally. The use of new ultra high density concrete will have enormous environmental implications, given its ability to deliver lighter, stronger structures capable of lasting many civilizations, while drastically decreasing the carbon emissions sent into the atmosphere by its inferior predecessor.

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Post tags: building material, concrete, Franz-Josef Ulm, Georgios Constantinides, green design, MIT, sustainable design

A group of students from Prasetiya Mulya Business School in Indonesia recently won the 2009 Global Social Venture Competition with their “EcoFaeBrick“, a quality, easily manufactured, low-cost sustainable building material made from cow dung. The bricks are not only 20% lighter, but they have a compressive strength 20% stronger than clay bricks and their production doesn’t rely upon devastating quarry mining techniques.

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Post tags: cow dung bricks, eco-friendly materials, EcoFaeBrick, Green Building, poo bricks, sustainable design, Sustainable Materials

Sustainable design superstar Michael Jantzen thrills us again with the oh-so-adaptable R-House. Intended as a vacation home, it is constructed nearly entirely from Accoya, a new ’species’ of sustainably-sourced wood designed for ultra-high performance and class 1 durability. Rotating walls slide around the exterior of the structure to keep sun and wind coming and going in all the right places. The house has both passive and prefab qualities and is built to be configured and assembled on-site. Photovoltaic cells and wind turbines will provide the house with all necessary energy, keeping it entirely off the power grid, and rainwater can be collected for washing and flushing.

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", green building concept, michael jantzen, michael jantzen r-house, off-grid r-house, r-house, rainwater recycling, renewable energy

The creative minds at miniWIZ recently debuted the POLLI-Brick, a recycled polymer bottle that can be interlocked to build an incredible array of structures. Made from recycled PET bottles, the lightweight bricks offer excellent acoustic and thermal insulation and can build anything from fences and roofs to pots for plants, skylights and beautiful walls of light.

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Post tags: ces polli-brick, green building material, miniwiz Polli-brick, polli-brick bottle architecture, polli-brick solar lighting, recycled pet polli-brick, sustainable building material

Arizona State University’s Flexible Display Center and HP recently announced a prototype of a flexible lightweight computer screen that stands to revolutionize computers and electronic devices. Created in a similar roll-to-roll manufacturing process as thin-film pv, these new computer screens are printed onto plastic sheets that are virtually indestructible, use less energy and are less costly to produce than conventional screens. These new displays could potentially use up to 90% less materials by volume to produce as well.

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Post tags: asu flexible display center, energy efficient computer monitors, flexible computer screens, green design, green gadgets, hp flexible display, sustainable design

In Paraguay, forested areas have been reduced to less than 10% of the country, which means that wood is scarcely available as a building material. Additionally, 300,000 families do not have adequate housing. These two serious factors couple to form a sizable problem, which community activist Elsa Zaldívar is addressing with an innovative approach to sustainable building. Recognizing the waste being sent to the landfill and a need for housing, Elsa worked with an industrial engineer to develop a material made from recycled plastic and agricultural fibers, like loofah, corn husks and caranday palm trees. These panels now provide an inexpensive, lightweight, flexible building material that can help communities reduce their agricultural waste while generating income and providing sustainable housing to families.

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", elsa zaldivar, green design, loofah building material, loofah homes, paraguay loofah industry, recycled building materials

Drywall is the number three producer of greenhouse gasses among building materials, trailing just behind cement and steel. Its production generates 200 million tons of carbon dioxide gas, a host of gypsum mines, and immense amounts of energy are required to fire the 500 degree kilns in which it is produced. But a ‘game-changer’ is on the horizon: EcoRock. This innovative material requires no gypsum, no ovens to produce, is made from 85 percent industrial by-products and is fully recyclable!

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Post tags: construction materials, eco friendly drywall, eco-friendly design, ecorock, green building materials, green design, Recycled Materials, serious materials, Sustainable Building

Wouldn’t it be great to be able change the shape and position of the walls of your house to go along with your mood, or more practically, the weather? Michael Jantzen’s transformable M-Velope® is just such a structure, offering an inspired approach to designing smaller and more usable spaces. The 230 sq foot flexible space can be rearranged into various positions by moving the slated wood panels on its steel frame. All homes really should have this capacity – to move, change and morph depending on our needs.


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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", fsc certified wood, Green Building, m-velope, michael jantzen, portable office, prefabricated building, transformable architecture, transformable building

What is stronger than steel and stands to revolutionize our built environment? Paper! Or rather, buckypaper to be more precise. Buckypaper is a material composed of carbon nanotubes that is 10 times lighter and over 500 times stronger than steel. While the miraculous material used to be prohibitively expensive and hard to make, scientists from Florida State University believe that they have made several key developments that will allow them to efficiently manufacture it for a variety of applications including airplanes and vehicles.

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Post tags: buckypaper, car of the future, carbon technology, carbon tubes, lighter than steel, nanotechnology, strong as steel