The nano man

After spending eight years enhancing the UAE’s built environments, Claude Berube has moved to Malaysia to concentrate on his other passion: nanotechnology. CID finds out more.

A regular fixture on the region’s interior design scene, Claude Bérubé’s UAE experience began eight years ago, with a teaching position at the American University of Sharjah’s interior design department. Bérubé then spent time with the interior design department at Ajman University, before heading up the interior design division of the State of Sharjah Directorate of Public Works.

All the while, he was pursuing a separate, if not unrelated passion: nanotechnology. A good number of years ago, Bérubé became convinced that nanotechnology could be a key contributor in the creation of a more sustainable society. He subsequently established the Malaysia-headquartered Nano Solutions Corp, to develop and commercialise nano-structure materials for the architectural, construction, fashion and design fields.

Marking a brand new chapter in a career that has spanned the globe, Bérubé left the UAE at the beginning of the year to take up permanent residence in Malaysia, and focus on his nanotechnology work. CID caught up with him before he left.

Why did you decide to become an interior architect?

My father wanted me to become an archeologist. He was an electronic engineer, but was more interested in archeology, antiques, numismatics and philately. Thus, I grew up surrounded by artifacts, and developed a strong interest in our interior surroundings.

That became a real love for making the interior environment reflect one’s individuality. Creating furniture was a way to express my contemporary culture – just as those who had designed the artifacts I had around me.

I studied product and interior design in Montreal, Quebec and in Birmingham, England, where I received my Masters degree. I returned to Montreal and after two years opened my own office, which by 1980 had become a major player in the design scene in Canada.

How did you end up in the UAE?

Nearly nine years ago, I was invited by the dean of the American University of Sharjah to give a talk on ‘New Ways of Working in the Electronic Communication Driven Office’. I then returned to Denmark where I was living at the time. One month later, the dean sent me an offer to teach. I accepted the offer and moved to the UAE.

The interior design department was small and the American University of Sharjah (AUS) did not seem to be interested in improving the status of the course; some ‘architects’ proposed at the time to eliminate or downsize the already small attendance of this course. After three years at AUS, I wanted to return to practice, but was then invited to become the co-ordinator of the interior design department at Ajman University.

With an impressive 300 interior design students, Ajman had the largest interior design department in the UAE. I accepted to do it for two years with the firm intention of going back into practice afterwards. After this, a student of mine at AUS, Sheikh Khaled Al Qassimi, the director general of the State of Sharjah Directorate of Public Works, offered me the opportunity to create an interior design division and gave me direction of this division. I was given total freedom and I implemented design policies regarding the interiors of buildings. This included museums, exhibition centres, hotels, child development centres, university projects, theatres, government buildings and offices.

I spent two years with the Directorate of Public Works and during that period, my nanotechnology solutions provider company in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, became very busy and required me to be there on a permanent basis. So, from the beginning of January 2010 I have been living in Malaysia, but still travelling around the world.

How did you first become involved with nanotechnology?

Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that interventions by interior and industrial designers, as well as architects, were highly important in ensuring the balance between our material culture and a more sustainable society. Unfortunately, that came with a cost that several clients were just not
ready to assume.

Just have a look at the Copenhagen Conference on Climate held in December and you can see the concerns of countries wanting to balance infinite human needs based on continual unsustainable economic growth, with the social equity our environment requires.

It became evident to me that economic concerns were not going to fade out and be replaced by a sudden desire to become unconditionally sustainable. The fact remains that the ‘deciders’ will not subscribe to a solution that places them in an economically weak position.

I believe that the designer’s ethical concerns contribute to the authenticity and elevation of our profession, and therefore decided to investigate other avenues. I have been fascinated for nearly ten years by nanotechnology.

Elevating the profession is not a goal in itself but a process of inner growth in which working toward a sustainable environment can play an important part. Our profession has changed in recent years and, just as we change ourselves, the world around us also changes.

I believe that nanotechnology will lead to dramatic changes in the use of natural resources, water and energy production, and distribution. Waste and pollution will be minimised and therefore a major impact on a sustainable environment can be expected.

Nanotechnology offers major potential benefits in numerous fields, and holds the promise of contributing significantly to sustainability, based on enhanced properties with decreased use of materials, energy and reduced waste. Nanotechnology forces us to review over a century of industrialisation but also requires us to reconsider irreversibly our cross-disciplinary approaches and perhaps brings up the need for integrating a more scientific approach in the design-development-construction process.

Nanotechnology developments will have a major impact on how we design public places and, perhaps more particularly, hotels, resorts, restaurants, offices, cinemas or hospitals. Nanotechnology scientists have achieved major technological breakthroughs that show the way to the production of strong, light and flexible ‘smart’ yarns for clothing and covering materials used in architectural and interior design projects; fabrics with the ability to conduct electricity and heat, eliminate pests, have hygienic surfaces and provide self-cleaning coatings.

Some of these textiles are impregnated with silver nanoparticles. Silver possesses natural anti-bacterial qualities that are strengthened at the nanoscale, thus giving textiles the ability to deactivate many harmful bacteria and viruses.

The silver infusion reduces the need to wash the fabric, since it destroys bacteria, and the small size of the particles prevents soiling and stains. Nanotechnologies can also help make these new textiles more cost-effective, more energy-efficient and more in tune with their environment. What this means for interior architecture is a new breed of materials with properties only dreamed of until now, such as Nanogel, the strongest and lightest material known to man, anti-graffiti paint, and several new materials integrating a more scientific approach in the design-development-construction process.

So, don’t be surprised when soon your interior architect asks you: “What would you like your selected material to do?” or “Would you like your exterior building surface finish to be self cleaning or to destroy the carbon dioxide in the air around it?”

The façade of the Jubilee Church in Rome, designed by architect Richard Meier, has a self-cleaning surface and even absorbs pollutants from the surrounding atmosphere and breaks them down into benign elements.

Tell us about Nano Solutions Corp?

I started Nano Solutions Corp to act as a vehicle to identify, integrate and commercialise value-added products in the field of architecture, construction, fashion and interior design, in order to commercially exploit the properties of nano-structure materials. So far, the company has successfully commercialised a protective nano mask that kills 99.9% of bacteria.

The Wellness Silver Nano Mask is made of 95% cotton and 5% lycra. Simply described, nanoscale silver particles are physically and inherently bonded to the fibres of the fabric. The NanoSilver particles will therefore not wash away. The kill rate of 99.9% is maintained even after the 50th wash.

It also reduces contamination and pollution from indiscriminate disposal of infested disposable masks. Working on an assumption of 300,000 users from a high-risk group using the mask daily over the next one year, there will be a garbage pile of over one billion disposable masks to deal with! This is assuming that they do not use more than one mask a day.

It also means that thousands of trees can be saved a year from being used to produce these paper masks, which eventually clog up drains, rivers and other water catchments reservoirs.

Nano Solutions Corp is also involved in nano-treating hotel linen, making the sheets more hygienic, anti-dirt and anti-smell. The process can destroy more than 1,500 microbes known to cause disease in humans. The process, in addition to saving one million litres of water per year in a 150-bedroom hotel, will shorten the washing time (less energy and water), will require fewer number of washings for a given time (less detergent consumption), and will be done with lower water temperature.

Is awareness of nanotechnology growing in the design community?

Kathy Jo Wetter, PhD from ETC Group, a group dedicated to sustainable advancement, recently said: “When the nanotech wave comes to shore, it will bring rapid, monumental, inescapable and potentially devastating change. Nanotechnology is a ‘platform technology,’ meaning that it has the potential to alter or completely transform the current state of the art in every major industrial sector”.

Therefore, to answer your question, I do not think that the design, architecture and education sectors are sufficiently aware of the changing and potentially devastating effect of nanotechnology in our everyday practice.

So far, principally in Malaysia, I have seen more real estate groups educating architects and designers on the use of nano-materials than the other way around. This position will soon have to change if our profession is to pretend to be at the forefront of development.

Nano-materials are only some of the new discoveries used by researchers to make better use of the materials we have. Designers can play their part in creating this change and seize the rewards of embracing sustainable development – or they can keep delivering incremental change through a ‘business as usual’ position, and be unprepared for the inevitable.

Will it be a threat or an opportunity for designers? We shall soon know!

Do you have any advice for students who are studying design?

It is unfortunate to notice in most design schools that I visit around the world, for forums or talks, that most education systems are based on 20th century technology, with very little space for changes in economics, technology and sustainability.

Designers involved in such educational systems will find themselves singled out when they get into the world of practice, which involves new materials and innovative concepts. It is likely that nanotechnology will change our way of practice as engineers, architects or designers in the near future. That means that upcoming designers, rather than designing according to the specific properties of various materials, should be able to define the performance criteria they are looking for and then have materials designed to meet these criteria.

Design is not a practice; design is a way of life, a way to perceive the environment we live in and respond to it imaginatively. When you are a designer, you do not retire, you die doing it; if you do not feel this way, don’t get into design or architecture.

My advice to young designers is to make it a way of life from the moment that they engage in their studies: surround yourself with design and do not hesitate to propose alternative material studies to your educational organisation, or to suggest projects involving sustainable and nanotechnology principles.

Be curious, read, get on the net and investigate the development of new materials and new properties, in order to expand your traditional palette.