To the observer, the building industry strives to develop the most optimized construction materials to build faster, better and cheaper, which has created an expanding pallet of increasingly complex, highly specific product systems. As a result, it is assumed that buildings are comprised of an established collection of parts, selected from a catalogue, and have the consequence of a one-time useful lifespan. This does not suggest that we have abandoned technological development; however, we suspect this approach will stall in its ability to address environmental challenges and create healthy, quality spaces because the sum is not greater than its parts. What if we use and assemble materials in a way that they can serve multiple functions at one time? The 2 in 1 – design strategy is a playful process that assembles materials so one material can incorporate several functions at a time. By finding synergies between well-known, standardized construction elements we can create a positive effect on the quality of building and reduce the carbon footprint.

The cultural elements drive the people’s way of life and ultimately influence their choice of the buildings they inhabit. Man, and his culture and his living environments are always correlated. While measuring heritage architecture, one tends to ignore the cultural and societal factors as the stakeholders. This isolated study can often paint half a picture of what a place was or could have been. An in-depth understanding of the “human element” will help appreciate the true “spirit of the place” despite the style, geometry, material, or construction method. While looking at a piece of craft, present-day perception focuses only on certain limited qualities such as visual or construction. Instant benefit has led to mass use of fabricated materials while ignoring any cautionary examination. Definition of any material’s sensual, social and symbolic worth often remains out of the scope for judgment. If these values are prioritized well, the architecture can continue to progress as a modest expression, adding a personality or realizing a life rather than producing alienating objects.

Identifying materials that can substitute rare natural resources is one of the key challenges for improving resource efficiency in the building sector. With a growing world population and rising living standards, the amount of salt (sodium chloride) produced as waste through seawater desalination and potash mining processes is increasing. Unfortunately, most of it is disposed of into nature where it causes environmental pollution. On the other hand, salt is affordable and can be used therapeutically in various respiratory treatments and to store humidity and heat. It was, therefore, necessary to determine salt materials already in use in building construction. The aim of this research was to identify those that have been used in history and analyzed in scientific studies, to investigate their physical and mechanical properties, and to identify the most promising applications in the construction field. This was accomplished via literature review, classifying the salt materials into three groups (raw salt, composite salt, and processed salt). It was found that salt has been used as a building material for centuries and has potential for future applications. 

Contemporary sustainable and resilient architecture encompasses design with nature, dynamic adaptability to external disturbances, smart redundancy, and changing futures, which are essential to cope with the prerequisites of cultural influences. Contributing to the existing literature, this paper presents a series of built scaled vault prototypes which integrated material performance-based approaches in computational design and advanced fabrication, utilizing locally sourced dredged material (DM) as one of the primary building ingredients. The investigated DM is acquired from Ohio’s Lake Erie harbors and one of the coastal ports in southern Louisiana. Annual sediment removal is a required task for local port authorities and federal agencies to maintain transportation waterways for economic viability. This paper discusses DM processing procedures, and granular mixture methods integrated into a number of computational frameworks to produce a range of vaulting projects from the contemporary DM-compressed stabilized tiles (DM-CST) vault to DM 3D printed vaults, considering material workability, buildability, and extrudability, as well as element’s strength and durability. Each design has to consider these factors while responding to the force of gravity in order to achieve desired structural geometry. 

3D printing, or additive manufacturing (AM), marks the latest in a series of technological and societal revolutions that span from the printing press to the personal computer and beyond. A key asset of this technology is that it aligns the architect with the manufacturing process, integrating the design and fabrication. Additive manufacturing, particularly fused deposition modeling (FDM), can further weave construction typologies like Frank Lloyd Wright’s textile block system by controlling the deposition process to create lightweight stressed-skin blocks with the potential for multiple functions. The research and creation of an initial prototype Woven Block module using FDM printing will be discussed.

Latest SMP (Shape Memory Polymers) materials may allow to produce future building elements that change their shape in various ways. This study focuses on (1) developing shape-changing multi-materials from SMP and (2) control the change in shape by harnessing its thermal responsiveness. We focus on the manufacturing of SMP/PLA (Polylactic acid), SMP/TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) and SMP/PETG (Polyethylene terephthalate glycol) composites, with special attention to SMP/TPU and SMP/PETG composites and their material behaviors compared to single SMPs. The first step was to initially investigate shape-changing and self-transforming composites. We report on (a) a thermo-active SMP capable of recovering from a shape-change after exposure to a temperature of 55°C and (b) testing the concept of 4D printing with FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) technique. Their printability and cohesion were tested, and consequently, a geometric connection strategy was introduced to design SMP/PLA and SMP/PETG composites. Finally, we managed to activate shape-change in an SMP/PETG with embedded heating wires controlled by a microcontroller.