Every year, new books come out for industrial designers and architects to familiarize themselves with the abundance of new materials they can probably barely afford to buy (see Emerging Technologies and Housing Prototypes or the Transmaterial series). Well, Inna Alesina and Ellen Lupton's new book Exploring Materials is absolutely nothing like that. Instead of glossy double page spreads of avant-garde materials accompanied by highly technical descriptions of their properties, readers of Exploring Materials are given a guided, almost hand-held tour through an exhaustive list of broad material categories along with tips and tricks on their use. Although the back of the book proclaims that it contains "everything designers need to not only jump-start their design process, but also follow a project through from idea to prototype to finished object," it doesn't quite feel like practicing designers are the target audience (and that may not be a bad thing).
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