Reimagining the architecture material library

Designing for the future means letting go of the past

The first office I helped move was in 2016. The process was extremely involved with nearly 100 people to consider and an expensive build-out of the commercial lease space. A great debate at the time – both with colleagues and across the sector – was how many physical material samples to keep in the library. 

Material libraries at architecture firms are critical – no digital representation of an object can recreate the true color and texture. That means that before something goes into a building, before you specify it, you need to see it. In 2016, office space was expensive. There’s a premium on every linear foot attributed to anything other than employees. This created tremendous pressure to downsize to only the materials that were most used. Still, this resulted in about 750 linear feet of shelf space for a firm of that size. 

From large firms to a home office

Library at 150LF

The next time I moved an office, we were growing from 20 to 30 people. A much smaller scale and a more specific type of work: affordable housing. When the budget is tight, there’s a smaller range of opportunities for materials and durability is not only necessary but a literal requirement for funding. So we had materials, but not nearly as many. More like 150 linear feet. (image right)

Years later, that same firm had to move office space again and thus the library was reduced once more. By the time COVID came around, we had simplified our materials library such  that I could take it all home with me. 

I retrofitted an underutilized closet at the top of the third floor of my home (the location of my home office) to install shelving on two sides with a large metal rack in the middle. This amounted to 70LF of shelving plus all the nooks and crannies you can manage to pile high. The materials moved in March 2020 and just barely fit.

Projects carried on. More materials were needed to review. The same projects started construction. Material samples were sent to my house to approve. 

And so the previously underutilized closet filled and filled. Occasionally, options that were not selected could be returned to a manufacturer, but many others lingered. 

It was in this state that my materials library sat for the next four years. With fewer and fewer projects going into construction, materials were no longer needed. When I started my firm, Architecture Towards Neutral, piles of unusable materials sat on those shelves, no longer valid for the work I was now doing. 

Cue the next very necessary materials library cleanout. 

Rethinking materials – let’s focus more on health, sustainability, and ethics, please!

In addition to volume reduction – those poor floor joists! – I also wanted to purge everything that could be found on the red-list (a list of “worst in class” substances in the building industry that pose serious risks to human health and the environment). It was time to refocus my specification powers to bio-based material rather than petroleum/fossil fuel based materials. See-ya later LVL, never loved you anyway!

I have also since become aware of the issue of modern day slavery. If you were like me, you probably knew something was up when that shirt or trinket was so cheap it seemed too good to be true, but I previously assumed this was due to low wages or difference in cost of living in the country where the item was manufactured. Yet, the cost of commercial building products didn’t seem low to me because there was no simple reference point. How much should a piece of fiber cement cost? I can’t go to the big-box store and check their prices. 

What I now know is that the fashion industry is not the only perpetrator of the atrocity that is modern day slavery. In fact, the building industry is one of the worst perpetrators! This is because of scale, because of sourcing of raw materials, and because there is very little oversight and even less transparency about how these materials come to be. (Thank you to the presenters at the Women in Green event for BE+ and the Design for Freedom conference for opening my eyes to this.)

More about Design for Freedom another day– but in the meantime, add this Toolkit to your obligatory global citizen reading.

Reduce, return, rehome

Well those are all the reasons why, but how? How do I get rid of all these things that are sitting in my material library? Here’s what I did:

• First, gather like materials and contact product representatives for take-back/ ask for return labels to ship back,

• Second, post for free on sites like Craigslist,

• Third, try to donate items that have reuse potential,

• Fourth, disassemble and recycle all materials that can’t be removed in the first three steps,

• Lastly, send to the incinerator (some trash in MA is burnt for energy).

After about triple the number of calls, I got in touch with a total of 13 reps. I categorized and sent back approximately 50lbs (this involved a LOT of schlepping). Thanks to Materials Bank which makes returns easy, and J&J flooring for having a very accessible take-back shipping program. 

I listed six posts for free stuff. Only 1 person actually came to retrieve the items (tiles).

I sent miscellaneous metal recycling to my parent’s recycling center where materials are directly sent to scrap and not added to single stream recycling like in the city. This is a more successful path to true material reuse since the metal is smelted down to create new metal.

The hardest thing to accept was just how much trash was created by this cleanout. At the end of the day, I had to send so many materials to trash. Sadly, what I’ve learned from all my material library cleanouts is that some things just don’t have a good place to go. Things like discontinued phenolic panel samples, rubber baseboard chainsets, and the like. 

Building a more intentional library for a better future

“As I build my firm, I am doing so with intention. I’m focusing on bio-based materials, so even if the products become unusable, they should be able to go back to the earth in some form.”

As I build my firm, I am doing so with intention. I’m focusing on bio-based materials, so even if, after years of service as a sample, the products become unusable, they should be able to go back to the earth in some form. 

Second, I am being even more diligent in what I let into my home. Reps are excited to have you see their product because that can mean a sale. But that also means they are likely to send more or non-requested items. It’s a very hard current to swim against, akin to declining a holiday gift, to tell someone not to send you something for free. Every step matters, every sample comes in packaging, tragically most of this is still single-use plastic. My plea to all reps: Please, please, please use only bio-based products, especially now that there are so many solutions to shipping without plastic.

Conclusion – what comes in must go out. Samples are a product just like any other. The life cycle of a sample product piece is akin to the life cycle on the job site and in the building, but on a micro scale. 

Today the plants are bigger, but the materials have downsized