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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.
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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.
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Ahmad and Steve...you can email me at: claude@berube.com for questions.