As a longtime regular columnist for Architect Magazine and the author of nine books, David R. Ravin School of Architecture Director Blaine Brownell is highly regarded for his expertise in emergent building materials and sustainable design and his wide-ranging knowledge of contemporary issues in architecture. Recent and upcoming engagements are examples of his frequent invitations to contribute to podcasts, conferences and awards juries.
Last month, Brownell was a guest on the Streetsblog “Talking Heads” podcast with Jeff Wood. Intrigued by several of Brownell’s articles for Architect Magazine, Wood invited Brownell to “talk about the role architecture plays in population decline, the need for permeability in walkable neighborhoods and a revolution in building materials.” Listen to their conversation here.
Next week, Brownell will head to Minneapolis for the annual Biomimetics International Industry Strategy Symposium, where he will present “Generational Materials That Scale” on Nov. 9. The symposium convenes business executives, researchers, policymakers and investors, with the goal of bringing nature-based products and practices to market.
“Generational material scaling (in industrialization) refers to the historical and ongoing transitions where society shifts its primary manufacturing, structural or electronic foundation to a completely new class of materials,” Brownell said. “A contemporary example of generational material scaling would be mass timber/CLT (cross-laminated timber), engineered wood products capable of replacing steel and concrete in mid-to-high-rise structures, drastically cutting carbon footprints and speeding up on-site assembly.”
Brownell added that “climate change and related environmental crises encourage us to act swiftly” to adopt new sustainable building materials like CLT.
A week after his Biomimetics26 lecture, Brownell will travel to Chicago to serve on the jury for the American Institute of Steel Construction 2027 IDEAS Awards. The IDEAS Awards are the structural steel industry’s highest design honor, awarded annually to “projects that illustrate the possibilities of structural steel design and construction.”
Brownell said that the steel industry “has been undergoing a quiet renaissance,” manifesting a quest for environmental sustainability, and that “many of the Ideas competition entries support better environmental performance.” In an article last year for Architect Magazine, he summarized some of the steel industry’s “measurable advances in environmental, economic, and technological performance,” including successes in recycling and the development of hybrid steel-mass timber systems.
These contemporary trends and others get a full exploration in Brownell’s new book, which will be published in March by Princeton Architectural Press. “Radical Green: Innovative Material Strategies for Sustainable Architecture” surveys the “radical materials being developed to help the built environment generate power, clean the air, house wildlife and provide clean and energy efficient housing,” the publisher states. It is Brownell’s tenth book.