Building materials are inextricably linked with the inheritance of history and culture, the development of economy, science and technology, and the needs of human emotions. Materials are the carrier of architectural design. The expression of building materials is an important part of architectural design. Since ancient times, in order to improve and change the living conditions and meet people’s material, spiritual, and emotional needs, human beings have been actively exploring new building materials, striving to explore the emotional connotations of architectural materials, and creating a variety of architectural landscape images. There are many studios specializing in building materials, such as Material Systems, Ecologic Studio, etc. (Wilson, et al., 2008)
Human beings are always actively exploring, as new materials emerge in an endless stream, and old materials are renewed with new style. At present, due to the development of urbanization in the world, the urban population is growing at a high speed. It has become the mission of the architects to solve the large-scale and integrated infrastructure construction of the city, catering the diverse needs of the urban population. There are also specialized studies like the Rural Studio in the United States focusing on low cost materials (Dean, Chua, & Robinson, 2002). The future buildings will develop toward higher and larger spans, richer, more ecological, and more humanized and diversified forms. In this process, materials will continue to serve aesthetics, functional, and eco-friendly purposes.
Part One: Aesthetic Purposes
As early as the mid-nineteenth century, German architect Gottfried Semper published The Four Elements of Architecture (Die vier Elemente der Baukunst), and the concept of “dressing” and “textiles” were first proposed for architecture. This is considered to be the prototype of the material weaving theory, and later it was inherited and perfected by many outstanding architects. Adolf Loos was the most important successor of Semper theory at the time. Loos pointed out the importance of wall cladding as a space enclosure and believed that materials have their own formal language and therefore required to distinguish between wall cladding and material decorative cladding. These theories show the importance of the material to the design while showing the relevant knowledge of the building material as a space enclosure (Hartoonian, 2006).
Art is a tool for conveying emotions, and human emotions are the soul of landscape design. The Guggenheim Museum in Spain, designed by architect Owen Gehry, is filled of human emotions in the design. The use of material language expression is based on a combination of traditional and modern materials such as glass, steel and limestone. It used some modern techniques such as crossover, overlap, torsion, and breakage on the exquisite and delicate traditional materials, to show human and emotional details, the prominent modern titanium material skin, the highly personalized high-tech era emotions. It is like a cluster of metal flowers reflected in the river water. The humanistic emotional factors in material language expression are the soul function in design. (Sokol & Mafi, 2018).
Concrete is one of the examples of diverse architectural language. Its form and color can be infinitely changed, and it is a material that can express the aesthetic orientation of design freely. Ando Tadao is known as the Concrete Poet architect. His creation of concrete has been a great success in creating aesthetic designs. For example, the representative of Ando’s classic “Church of the Light” highlights the potential artistic charm of concrete materials. The walls of the church are all made of clear water concrete without any decoration. The solid and thick concrete is absolutely enclosed, and the characteristics of the cold, hard, rough and cool concrete texture match perfectly with the holiness of the space. The material is in sharp contrast with the huge-scale light cross on the wall, showing the seriousness and sacredness of the church, which evokes a solemn feeling (BCF.edu, 2018).
Part Two: Functional Purposes
With the rapid development of modern science and technology, high-rise, large-span, multi-functional construction projects continue to emerge. This undoubtedly put forward higher requirements for the bearing capacity and durability of cement concrete. High performance concrete has become a hot spot for researchers to explore. Carbon Nanotubes have superior mechanical properties and high aspect ratio, showing great advantages in strength, elastic modulus and toughness (Douba, et al., 2019). The application of carbon nanotubes to cement concrete can improve the strength, toughness, and ductility of cement-based composites, significantly improve their durability, and impart many new functional properties such as electrical conductivity and