Libraries of matter – “Libraries contain books, yes. But they also contain latex rubber, carbon fiber fabrics, and graphene aerogel. And in some materials libraries you can cut, cast, drill, sand, scrape, and sculpt too. Browsing the aisles at Material Connexion’s Manhattan headquarters can be overwhelming. The displays hold plaques exhibiting a seemingly random assortment of items: a perfume bottle, a shiny black grille, a square of denim, a vial of milky liquid, a scaly swatch of leather, a metal sphere. There are a couple of zippers and at least two toothpaste tubes, plus flooring samples, textile swatches, wall coverings, and assorted containers of mysterious liquids, chips, and powders. What matters here is not each object itself but what it’s made of. The bottle is demonstrating a premium recycled glass, absent the common greenish tinge. The grille uses carbon fiber oriented vertically along the Z-axis, like the plush threads in velvet. The denim is polypropylene modified to make it dyeable. The vial contains latex rubber from the guayule plant. The leather derives from skins discarded by artisanal seafood cooperatives in Honduras. The sphere claims to be the first high-temperature dissolvable metal alloy suitable for the oil and gas industry. Who knew that fracking requires dissolvable parts?

This is a materials library – the world’s first, outside of small sample collections at architecture and design practices. Material Connexion was the brainchild of George Beylerian, a design enthusiast and serial entrepreneur.  In 1990, he cocurated an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt design museum called Mondo Materialis, inviting more than 100 architects and designers to showcase materials they were excited about. The exhibit served as what The New York Times called ‘a coming-out party for such materials as neoprene sheeting and electrochromic glass that could change color throughout the day’…”