Why am I passionate about this?

I'm an architect, professor, and director of the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Throughout my career, I've sought to empower people to improve the designed environment through better knowledge of materials. I've written nine books and many articles on emerging materials, sustainable building technologies, and Japanese architecture and design. Having lived in Japan several times, I also appreciate the importance of developing an expanded worldview of material practices.


I wrote

Transmaterial: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment

By Blaine Brownell,

Book cover of Transmaterial: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment

What is my book about?

I wrote Transmaterial based on the need for more knowledge about new materials in contemporary architecture and design practice. Transmaterial…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Material World: A Global Family Portrait

Blaine Brownell Why did I love this book?

Global socioeconomic diversity is an important yet abstract concept, but this book offers tangible evidence.

Household material wealth varies significantly worldwide in both quantity and quality. To reveal this diverse range, sixteen photographers visited thirty countries and lived briefly with families considered statistically average for their nation.

In the book, each family stands before their abode with all their household possessions. Suffice it to say that contrasts abound.

By Peter Menzel,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Material World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Called “Fascinating! An incredible book” by Oprah Winfrey, this beloved photography collection vividly portrays the look and feel of the human condition everywhere on Earth.

In an unprecedented effort, sixteen of the world’s foremost photographers traveled to thirty nations around the globe to live for a week with families that were statistically average for that nation. At the end of each visit, photographer and family collaborated on a remarkable portrait of the family members outside their home, surrounded by all of their possessions; a few jars and jugs for some, an explosion of electronic gadgetry for others.

This internationally acclaimed…


Book cover of Concrete Planet: The Strange and Fascinating Story of the World's Most Common Man-Made Material

Blaine Brownell Why did I love this book?

Concrete is the second most-consumed substance in the world after water.

But modern concrete has an endurance problem: today's steel-reinforced material suffers from "concrete cancer," which will cause widespread degradation. By comparison, non-steel-reinforced Roman concrete structures, such as the Ponte Sant'Angelo or the Pantheon, will long outlast our modern bridges, highways, and towers.

Robert Courland's book is full of such eye-opening insights that will forever change how readers think about this omnipresent material.

By Robert Courland,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Concrete Planet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Concrete: We use it for our buildings, bridges, dams, and roads. We walk on it, drive on it, and many of us live and work within its walls. But very few of us know what it is. We take for granted this ubiquitous substance, which both literally and figuratively comprises much of modern civilization's constructed environment; yet the story of its creation and development features a cast of fascinating characters and remarkable historical episodes. This book delves into this history, opening readers' eyes at every turn.

In a lively narrative peppered with intriguing details, author Robert Corland describes how some…


Book cover of Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth

Blaine Brownell Why did I love this book?

Measuring environmental impact typically involves inscrutable measures like equivalent carbon emissions.

The Ecological Footprint method, devised by Wackernagel and Rees at the University of British Columbia, employs a much more palpable calculation of resource utilization and emissions: land. By demonstrating how the flows of global energy, materials, and waste can be converted into land-area equivalents, the authors make environmental impact tangible.

The book clearly articulates the most essential sustainability metric there is: one-Earth living.

By Mathis Wackernagel, William Rees,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Our Ecological Footprint as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Equipped with useful charts and thought-provoking illustrations, this book introduces a revolutionary new way to determine humanity's impact on the Earth and presents an exciting and powerful tool for measuring and visualising the resources required to sustain households, communities, regions, and nations.


Book cover of Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism

Blaine Brownell Why did I love this book?

Lo-TEK is an abbreviation for Traditional Ecological Knowledge, something contemporary societies lack.

Today, sustainable design strategies often employ complex technological approaches—such as double-glazed facades with automated shading devices. And yet such methods are typically energy- and material-intensive.

For millennia before industrialization, indigenous societies developed sophisticated material practices based on multigenerational wisdom about local ecosystems and climate. In this book, the author investigates remarkable indigenous approaches in 18 countries that are still practiced today. The living root bridges in Northern India are not to be missed.

By Julia Watson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lo-TEK as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, this mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive. Today, we have slowly come to realize that the legacy of this mythology is haunting us. Designers understand the urgency of reducing humanity's negative environmental impact, yet perpetuate the same mythology of technology that relies on exploiting nature. Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing…


Book cover of A New Reality: Human Evolution for a Sustainable Future

Blaine Brownell Why did I love this book?

A visit to the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, is on most architects' bucket lists.

The virologist Jonas Salk, who commissioned architect Louis Kahn to design the significant project, is best known for developing one of the first successful polio vaccines. Less familiar is this remarkable book, which Salk wrote with his son Jonathan, that explores the future of human societies.

By applying scientific principles about how organisms respond to resource limitations, the authors project the significant resource challenges and opportunities that await future human generations. The book looks beyond the population explosion to explore its mysterious aftermath. Indeed, the transition is already underway.

By Jonas Salk, Jonathan Salk,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A New Reality as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New Reality: Human Evolution for a Sustainable Future provides a startling, fresh new message of understanding, perspective and hope for today’s tense, rapid-fire, kaleidoscopically changing world.

Drawn from the writings of visionary scientist Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine, and extended and developed by his son Jonathan, the message of A New Reality explodes from the past, and sheds light on tensions that besiege us, and the currents of discord that are raging as these words are written. More importantly, it indicates a way forward out of our current situation.
 
Written by a world-famous doctor and folk hero,…


Explore my book 😀

Transmaterial: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment

By Blaine Brownell,

Book cover of Transmaterial: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment

What is my book about?

I wrote Transmaterial based on the need for more knowledge about new materials in contemporary architecture and design practice. Transmaterial is short for transformative materials, or products and assemblies that have the demonstrated capacity to alter the physical environment's function, form, and performance in measurable ways. The materials in the book are organized according to significant design trends. For example, recombinant materials are composites that outperform their individual parts, and interfacial materials are products that bridge the physical and digital divide.

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Book cover of The Bloomsbury Photographs

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Why am I passionate about this?

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What is my book about?

An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group’s key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs. Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private insight into their lives.

Maggie Humm brings together a curated selection of these photographs to offer us a fresh portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, showing them in a new, domestic intimacy. She brings to life the texture of Bloomsbury: their pastimes, children, clothes, houses, servants, pets, and holidays.

The Bloomsbury…

The Bloomsbury Photographs

By Maggie Humm,

What is this book about?

An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group's key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs

Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private insight into their lives.

Maggie Humm brings together a curated selection of these photographs to offer us a fresh portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, showing them in a new, domestic intimacy. She brings to life the texture of Bloomsbury: their pastimes, children, clothes, houses, servants, pets, holidays. Several photographs are…


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