Topic

Materials

Every era is named after one, which should be a clue.

28: in design
10:02: average
281 min: in total
138: across the network

Materials across the network →

All briefs28

13:32

Afra and Tobia Scarpa

Material obsession over style: their work answers 'what can this do?' before 'what should it look like?'

11:58

Anna Castelli Ferrieri

Plastic wasn’t just new material—it was a new grammar for furniture, and she wrote the first sentences.

11:22

Charles and Ray Eames

Charles and Ray Eames were not stylists — they were problem-solvers who turned plywood, pressure, and wartime urgency into a new grammar of making.

4:32

Maglite

A flashlight that became a weapon because its materials refused to compromise.

11:54

The Moka Express is a functional industrial object defined by constraint: it delivers espresso-style coffee without electricity, pumps, or bar pressure. Its success lies in aluminium’s lightness and manufacturability, its vertical stack’s thermodynamic inevitability, and its tolerance for user inconsistency. Its flaw — the strombolian phase — is inseparable from its mechanism. It is influential not because it is perfect, but because it is sufficient.

9:43

Poul Kjærholm

Kjærholm didn’t make Danish modern — he made steel poetic.

8:57

7132 Thermal Baths

A quarry made habitable — where every gap is deliberate, every weight accounted for, and every visitor is made aware of gravity.

9:39

Wang Shu

Material literacy is not a metaphor — it is brick, hand, and demolition site.

9:34

Charlotte Perriand

Design is not style — it is steel over rare wood, cane over chrome, and time spent in a place before drawing a line.

12:00

Chrysler Building

William Van Alen · 1930

The Chrysler Building is a 1,046-foot-tall steel-framed brick skyscraper in New York City, designed by William Van Alen in the Art Deco style and completed in 1930. Van Alen used Nirosta stainless steel—the first such use in an American project—as an integral design element. He secretly built a 125-foot spire inside the frame and assembled it in 90 minutes on October 23, 1929. The building served as a real-world test site for stainless steel durability, with formal inspections every five years from 1929 to 1960. It became the world’s tallest building for 11 months and remains the tallest steel-framed brick building in the world. Critics responded with mixed reactions—including praise for Van Alen personally and criticism of the building as superficial and lacking serious design significance.

9:54

Eames Lounge Chair

Charles Eames, Ray Eames · 1956

A high-end lounge chair and ottoman introduced in 1956 by Herman Miller, designed by Charles and Ray Eames, composed of three veneered molded plywood shells and leather-upholstered cushioning.

11:35

Eero Saarinen

Saarinen didn’t invent a style—he invented a method for making form answer function, then insisted others do the same.

10:16

Fallingwater

Frank Lloyd Wright · 1936

Fallingwater is a weekend retreat built over a 20-foot waterfall on Bear Run in Stewart Township, southwestern Pennsylvania. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. and Liliane Kaufmann, it uses exposed cantilevers, sandstone verticals, and concrete horizontals. Its 30° counterclockwise orientation ensures natural light in all rooms. Wright insisted occupants live *with* the waterfall — not look at it — using identical materials inside and out to dissolve boundaries. Trees were preserved via adaptive detailing. The design was judged unsound by Kaufmann’s engineers; the contractor secretly reinforced concrete elements. Structural vulnerabilities confirmed in 1994 led to steel supports and post-tensioning by 2002. At $155,000, it was one of Wright’s most expensive commissions.

9:44

Frank Gehry

Gehry didn’t break architecture—he rebuilt it around software, budget, and scrap-yard materials.

10:24

Grete Jalk

Grete Jalk didn’t invent bent plywood — she proved it could carry Denmark’s reputation on two curved slabs.

9:10

Issey Miyake

Clothing is not cut from fabric—it’s liberated from it.

9:18

Kengo Kuma

Kuma doesn’t build buildings — he builds frames for nature, using technology to make stone disappear.

10:04

Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier’s Dom-Ino House is not architecture — it’s a patent for making architecture obsolete.

10:32

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Mies didn’t invent minimalism—he weaponised the grid, the bolt, and the beam to make architecture a declaration of industrial certainty.

9:26

Marc Newson

Newson’s style isn’t about curves—it’s about knowing the right one before it’s drawn.

8:29

Marcel Wanders

Wanders’ design method is a deliberate tension—not between old and new, but between material sophistication and making simplicity.

10:23

Marco Zanuso

Zanuso didn’t invent modernism — he built its operating system.

9:27

Neri Oxman

Design research as hypothesis-testing—not product development.

10:22

Panton Chair

Verner Panton · 1963

The Panton Chair is the world’s first single-piece moulded plastic chair — a continuous S-shaped shell with no legs, no joints, no assembly. Designed by Verner Panton in the 1960s, it emerged from iterative prototyping in plaster and fibreglass-reinforced polyester, then scaled via thermoplastic polystyrene injection moulding. Its success lies in resolving stackability, cantilever, and monolithic form — but its fixed geometry sacrifices adaptability and long-term durability. It proved plastic could carry structure and identity at scale, influencing decades of industrial seating. It is worth your time: not as a relic, but as a decisive answer to a tight set of material and manufacturing constraints.

9:14