Guides: Materials Research: Resources by Discipline

General Architecture and Construction

AIA Continuing Education Center
Continuing Education Site of the AIA
Building Materials (by McGraw-Hill Sweets)
Sweets is the building product source for the design and construction professional: Architects, Contractors, Subcontractors, Designers, Engineers, Facility Managers and Building Owners. Sweets is like no other building product database - with comprehensive product information, CAD details, BIM objects, specs, catalogs, galleries, green product information CEUs and more on over 100,000 products.
Cornell University Library Construction Resource Guide
Construction resource guide from Cornell University Engineering Library. Resources on engineering for construction, construction costs and building codes
National Institute of Building Sciences
The National Institute of Building Sciences was established by the U.S. Congress in the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, Public Law 93-383. NIBS is an authoritative voice that supports advances in building science and technology to improve the built environment.
Princeton University Library Construction Resources Guide
Princeton University's Construction Resources Guide
Whole Building Design Guide
The WBDG is the only web-based portal providing government and industry practitioners with one-stop access to up-to-date information on a wide range of building-related guidance, criteria and technology from a 'whole buildings' perspective. Currently organized into four major categories—Design Recommendations, Project Management / Operations & Maintenance, Federal Facility Criteria and Continuing Education—at the heart of the WBDG are Resource Pages, reductive summaries on particular topics.

Healthy Materials and Green Construction

Carbon Leadership Forum
The Carbon Leadership Forum accelerates the transformation of the building sector to radically reduce the embodied carbon in building materials and construction through collective action.
We pioneer research, create resources, foster cross-collaboration, and incubate member-led initiatives to bring embodied carbon emissions of buildings down to zero.
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We are architects, engineers, contractors, material suppliers, building owners, and policymakers who care about the future and are taking bold steps to decarbonize the built environment, with a keen focus on eliminating embodied carbon from buildings and infrastructure.
Cradle to Cradle Institute
The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute is dedicated to powering innovation for the circular economy through products that have a positive impact on people and planet.
Embodied Carbon Footprint Database
Embodied carbon comes from the consumption embodied energy consumed to extract, refine, process, transport and fabricate a material or product (including buildings). It is often measured from cradle to (factory) gate, cradle to site (of use), or cradle to grave (end of life). The embodied carbon footprint is therefore the amount of carbon (CO2 or CO2e emission) to produce a material.
Health Product Declaration Consortium
The HPD Open Standard is a standard specification – composed of a format and instructions – for the accurate, reliable and consistent reporting of product contents and associated health information, for products used in the built environment. The HPD Open Standard specification is harmonized with programs of International Living Future Institute, Cradle-to-Cradle Product Innovation Institute, Clean Production Action, BIFMA, LEED, WELL and a growing number of rating and certification standards in the building industry.
Healthy Materials Lab Parsons School of Design
The Parsons Healthy Materials Lab website and links to resources for healthy architectural materials
mindful Materials
mindful MATERIALS (mM) is a free platform with aggregated information on human health and environmental impacts for products from leading manufacturers, vetted by experts passionate about making it easier to make informed product choices.
Off Grid Energy Independence
Off Grid Energy Independence provides you with a free daily update of the latest industry developments. Launched in February 2009, this free portal covers progress of energy harvesting and energy storage in all its forms.
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Off Grid Energy Independence is hosted and written by IDTechEx, the leading analyst and event organiser on off grid energy harvesting and related technologies. Articles provide commentary, analysis and give a balanced view of the subject. You can opt-in for an email to be sent to you every Thursday listing the new articles posted in the previous week. We aim to make this service your most valuable tool for keeping up to date with the off grid energy harvesting industry. We seek your input - company progress, press releases, case studies and developments, which in turn we will feature as future articles. Please forward these to us - email Tessa Henderson on tessa@IDTechEx.com.
ReMaterialise
Explore our extensive database of 'sustainable' materials. The database itself represents the culmination of over a decades intensive research which has spanned the globe to pull together a diverse array of material information.
Transparency
Too often, some of the design profession's most impactful decisions are made in the dark, with little material information available to anyone specifying a product. But designing healthy buildings means specifying healthier building products. For years, designers at Perkins and Will have facilitated informed decisions by working with clients and manufacturers to find alternatives that use the fewest possible toxic substances. We help our fellow design professionals do the same through Transparency.
Treehugger
Online resource for all things sustainable

Databases

Beazley Archive Pottery Database
Beazley Database for Plaster Casts
CAMEO:
The Conservation and Art Materials Encyclopedia Online (CAMEO) is a database that compiles, defines, and disseminates technical information on the distinct collection of terms, materials, and techniques used in the fields of art conservation and historic preservation. First developed as a materials database in 1997 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston it has expanded with the cooperation of multiple institutions to include several reference collections.
Etruscan and Central Italian Architectural Terracottas Online Database

Center for Hierarchical Materials Design MGI Tools and Databases
Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD) is a NIST-sponsored center of excellence for advanced materials research focusing on developing the next generation of computational tools, databases and experimental techniques in order to enable the accelerated design of novel materials and their integration to industry, one of the primary goals of the U.S. Government's Materials Genome Initiative (MGI).(Freely Available)
Make It From
MakeItFrom.com is a curated database of engineering material properties that emphasizes ease of comparison. It is not a datasheet dump: every listed material is an internationally recognized generic material. The data is sourced from published standards, academic literature, and supplier documentation.
Materials Education Symposia
A portal for the symposia post sessions, presentations, and more. These unique 2-day Symposia are now firmly established in the calendar as a leading venue for the University-level Materials Education community to come together to discuss ideas, tools, and best practice relating to the teaching of materials in across engineering, design, and science.
MatWeb
MatWeb's searchable database of material properties includes data sheets of thermoplastic and thermoset polymers such as ABS, nylon, polycarbonate, polyester, polyethylene and polypropylene; metals such as aluminum, cobalt, copper, lead, magnesium, nickel, steel, superalloys, titanium and zinc alloys; ceramics; plus semiconductors, fibers, and other engineering materials.(Freely Available)
OpenMaterials
OpenMaterials is a research group dedicated to open investigation and experimentation with DIY production methods and uses of materials.
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In the spirit of the open source software and hardware movements, we hope to promote materials to be researched and developed in a public, collaborative manner. We see materials as an open resource, and wish to establish an open process for exploring and sharing knowledge, techniques and applications related to materials science.
Springer Materials
The research solution for identifying material properties
Fast and reliable insights accelerating materials science research
SpringerMaterials provides curated data and advanced functionalities to support research in materials science, physics, chemistry, engineering, and other related fields.(Penn Only)

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Materials Research