Today, architects and designers are beginning to look toward developments in new"smart" or "intelligent" materials and technologies for solutions to long-standing problemsin building design. However, these new materials have so far been applied in a diversebut largely idiosyncratic nature, because relatively few architects have access toinformation about the types or properties of these new materials or technologies.Two of the leading experts in this field – Addington and Schodek – have solved thisproblem by incorporating all the relevant information of all the latest technologiesavailable to architects and designers in this one volume. They present materials bydescribing their fundamental characteristics, and go on to identify and suggest howthese same characteristics can be exploited by professionals to achieve their designgoals. Here, the wealth of technical understanding already available in the materialsscience and engineering literature is at last made accessible to a design audience.