Will McLean, Pete Silver: Sustainable and Regenerative Materials for Architecture: A Sourcebook

Text: Lilla Lapinskas

Sustainable use of materials has become one of the most pressing and exciting issues in architecture in recent years. In this context, Will McLean and Pete Silver’s newly published book titled Sustainable and Regenerative Materials for Architecture: A Sourcebook is particularly timely. The book is structured in a systematic yet exploratory way. The first chapter briefly reviews the historical background of materials research, its static and technological aspects, the significance of carbon footprint calculation, and the logic of the circular economy. This lays the foundation for the fundamental relationships and concepts that are discussed in the second part of the book. The second and third chapters deal separately with extracted and grown materials. These chapters provide an encyclopaedic overview: the projects are grouped by material type, which is particularly effective in the digital (Kindle) version, where internal links facilitate navigation between projects. The authors have indeed selected from among the most recent developments: they present more than 50 projects and material experiments, and this diversity is one of the book’s greatest strengths. The publication of the book and the multitude of projects it presents clearly illustrate the marked shift that has become increasingly apparent in architectural thinking over the past decade: the new wave of the material turn seems to be partly intertwined with the ecological turn, and the question of building material selection has become one of the most critical aspects of architecture.