Guides: Materials Research: Collections

Art Center College of Design (Pasadena CA)
CMTEL is the Color Materials and Trends Exploration Laboratory at the Art Center College of Design
California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA)
The New Materials Library showcases new and innovative materials with a focus on eco-friendly, sustainable and technologically smart products
Harvard Graduate School of Design Materials Collection(Cambridge, MA)
The Harvard Graduate School of Design Materials Collection is a physical and digital collection of materials, ranging from innovative, new materials to those found everyday in the constructed environment. The collection allows for both intuitive, tactile browsing, and non-linear searching of various database categories.
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The Materials Collection is a collection of over 800 materials ranging from innovative, new materials to those found everyday in the constructed environment. The physical collection, organized into five material families—Biocomposite, Polymer, Metal, Mineral, and Ceramic—allows for tactile browsing, while Material Order SEARCH provides multiple points of access to meet research needs. By foregrounding material composition and functional traits, the collection allows users to rethink conventional applications and promote material experimentation in design practice. Explorations in material research find expression through publications, exhibitions, colloquia, and course offerings that examine the research interests of the GSD.
iMatter; Materials Library of the Design Museum (Holon, Israel)
iMatter, The Materials Library, services professional Architects, Designers, Engineers and Industrialists with updated information regarding the latest innovations of the Material World. The library opened to the public early 2008 with the support of the Municipality of Holon and the Ministry of Industry, Trade & Labor, as part of Design Museum Holon. This is a unique and one-of-its-kind project in Israel.
MaterFad Centro de Materiales de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain)
MaterFad provides information on materials and their associated technology to businesses, professionals, technology centres and universities. The centre gives advice on topics such as the manufacture of eco-friendly products, the use of active materials or the application of nanotechnology.
Material Biblioteket (Sweden)
Materialbiblioteket (The Library of Materials) brings materials in close contact with the Scandinavian community of architects, industrial designers and product developers. Materialbiblioteket exhibits material manufacturers’ material and manufacturing methods in a permanent materials showroom
Material Order
Shared catalog of material collections at Harvard, Columbia, RISD, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania.
Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY)
The Center for Sustainable Design Studies houses a comprehensive case studies and materials library, provides access to life-cycle assessment tools and organizes professional development workshops in sustainability.
Sitterwerk Katalog (Switzerland)
The Sitterwerk Catalogue provides access to the holdings of the Art Library (Kunstbibliothek) and the Material Archive (Werkstoffarchiv) and makes research developed with the Werkbank (Workbench) accessible. In addition to the Material Archive, there is the stand alone Material Archiv catalog which features the entire materials collection.
University College (London, UK)
The Materials Library is a collection of some of the most wondrous materials on earth, gathered from sheds, labs, grottoes and repositories around the world. It is a resource, laboratory, studio, workshop, and playpen for the material-minded. It is a place for truly interdisciplinary inquiry and innovation, in which makers from all disciplines can see, touch, research and discuss, so that they can apply the knowledge and experience gained to their own practice.
University of Houston (Houston TX)
The Materials Research Collaborative (MRC) at the University of Houston College of Architecture serves as a materials resource for material discovery, innovation, instruction, and research.
University of Texas (Austin, TX)
The University Co-op Materials Resource Center in the School of Architecture maintains one of the largest and most comprehensive material collections of its kind at any college or university in the country, if not the world, standing at 27,000 + material samples and corresponding product literature (manufacturer catalogues, brochures, multimedia, etc.).