Essay

Adaptive Materials for Responsive Environments

Now, in the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers at Arizona State University have created a material that may be able to not only sense damage in structural materials, such as cracking in a fiber-reinforced composite, but to even heal it. The aim of developing “autonomous adaptive structures” is to mimic the ability of biological systems such as bone to sense the presence of damage, halt its progression, and regenerate itself. — Science Daily (reprinted with adaptations from American Institute of Physics materials.

After reading the above quote, you may start to more truly understand what smart materials, and more specifically adaptive materials, are becoming capable of doing. Not only would such innovations help the building industry with the maintenance of buildings, and therefore also their safety, but they would also carve a path toward further developments leading to more sophisticated adaptive environments.

To see a quick example of how an adaptive material might work in terms of shape memory behavior, take a look at the following video of a polymer that regains its original shape once exposed over a certain temperature of its heat threshold —

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While the above video may look simple enough, I invite you to consider what might develop in the future as a result of such adaptive materials as they evolve into our future environments.

Suppose for a moment that wall systems could expand and contract, pulling from different shape memories, and reacting to different stimuli that trigger their adaptation responses. Imagine that many of the functions within a building that are now static and locked in place, in the future could become dynamic — moving to wherever they are needed, seamlessly and easily because of their “self-healing” and “morphing” nature.

When combining adaptive materials with other forward thinking ideas such as the inherent ability of smart materials to take on newfound properties such as greater strength, increased flexibility, self-cleaning and a great variety of other transient behaviors — adaptive materials will most certainly be an interesting topic to keep an eye on.

But for now, I encourage you to watch this next video entitled the “Living Kitchen”. And as you watch, keep an open mind to transcend modern day limitations and begin to think more creatively about what architecture and its adaptive installations will be able to do to improve human lifestyle in the future. 

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Image Credit: seier+seier | Flickr