Today, architects and designers are beginning to look toward developments in new

"smart" or "intelligent" materials and technologies for solutions to long-standing problems

in building design. However, these new materials have so far been applied in a diverse

but largely idiosyncratic nature, because relatively few architects have access to

information about the types or properties of these new materials or technologies.

Two of the leading experts in this field - Addington and Schodek - have solved this

problem by incorporating all the relevant information of all the latest technologies

available to architects and designers in this one volume. They present materials by

describing their fundamental characteristics, and go on to identify and suggest how

these same characteristics can be exploited by professionals to achieve their design

goals. Here, the wealth of technical understanding already available in the materials

science and engineering literature is at last made accessible to a design audience.