Winston Churchill was foresighted when he said, “We shape our buildings: thereafter they shape us.” For a societal expression, the role of architecture is vital. It also influences its sustenance and advancement. This discipline, which has dominantly articulated a leaning towards creativity, has progressively embraced technology over the decades. It has now come of age and realised the potential a handshake of technology and creativity can hold, accepting its overriding necessity in the current scenario. With new gadgets flooding the market, and technology, making every dream design work at one’s disposal, the expectation from the building industry to match this trend has risen sharply.

An increased eagerness to deliver more has resulted in the strand of technology weaving itself through architecture, often imperceptibly but significantly, taking it to heights never fathomed before. One such significant manifestation is ‘Smart Materials’.

Visualise this – a column buckles under weight but regains its shape once the weight is removed; a window through its glass, allows the exact amount of light that one requires, enabling it to be controlled accurately. This is not a proposition in fantasy but a soon-to-be reality owing to the application of Smart Materials in building technology.

Smart materials
Often building materials around us are static, be it stone, steel or glass. Whether they are natural or processed, their behaviour to external stimuli like light, temperature and moisture are predictable. The drive in the building industry for a long period of time was to stretch these predictable reactions to newer dimensions, so that different applications of these materials can be found. Thereby, variations of the basic material evolved, leading to innovative versions and products. But their properties could be minimally altered.

Smart materials on the other hand, have one or more properties that can be significantly altered to generate controlled reaction to external stimuli in real time.

What this means is that by changing the external conditions in which a smart material is placed, one can expect the material to intelligently alter its properties on its own, resulting in a change in their structure or composition or function. This ability often fetches them the label of responsive materials too. Mostly the smart materials are embedded into other systems or products to offer a range of utilities that makes their application very beneficial.
There are numerous varieties of smart materials – Piezoelectric materials, thermo responsive or shape memory alloys, magnetic shape memory alloys, pH-sensitive polymers and chromogenic or electro chromic materials. They vary their properties based on stress, temperature, pH, electrical, optical or thermal changes in the conditions around them. They change their shape or colour at times or glow or change viscosity by melting or hardening back, depending on the stimuli. A significant thing about them is that the change occurred in any of these smart materials, is reversible in real time.

Architectural relevance
As architects and designers are embracing technology to ascertain solutions to many long-standing issues in architecture, their interest and awareness in smart materials is gradually growing. However smart materials by themselves do not find immense direct application in the building industry yet. Till date, they have been mostly integrated into products non related to architecture, like photochromatic t shirt or coffee pot thermostat, to provide a diverse and distinct use or identity.

Though relatively few architects have access to information about these smart materials, a need to know and integrate them is arising steadily as well. Integrating these intelligent materials into a system, manifests their relevance exponentially.

The SmartWrap is one such application of smart materials. The Metropolis Magazine reported the following about SmartWrap, “SmartWrap is a new ultra-thin, polymer-based material currently in development that, if all goes as planned, could literally change the face of the building industry. Developed by Timberlake and Stephen Kieran, principals of Philadelphia architecture firm KieranTimberlake Associates LLP, the compound comprises substrate and printed and laminated layers that have been roll-coated into a single film. This ensuing film has the capacity to change colour and appearance, as well as to provide shelter, control interior climates, and offer light and electriciy.”

What this offers is a quick solution for an enclosure compared to the regular brick and mortar wall. The SmartWrap also incorporates information about a number of systems like heating, lighting, and information display. All of these functions are computer-controlled and can be adjusted on or off site.

“The most intriguing aspect of this is that structures built with SmartWrap do not require conventional windows to let light in or allow views out. In Instead, by altering the spacing of the patterns printed on SmartWrap’s surface, one can create windows, remove them, and alter their locations and also change the visuals and patterns one wishes to see. These applications could be useful for private, commercial, retail, and business concerns,” notes the magazine. Indeed, this can be quite revolutionary when used in a building.

Currently, a few products have emerged incorporating the smart material technology in them, ensuring a novel usage, different and satisfying in experience. A couple of them are fluroscent paints and step and seat edge lights that glow in theatres.

Their variety in the building industry is small but will surely grow to be significant.
Smart Material technology has had a nascent genesis in the building industry but truly an emphatic one. A growing understanding of these materials should be deliberated upon, that will prove very beneficial to every architect and designer in the fullness of time.

Nandita Srinivas is a practising architect and interior designer. She can be reached at nandita.srinivas@gmail.com