"Building energy-efficient structures is one of the challenges of 21st century architecture. In this respect, finding and commercialising new materials may provide the necessary breakthrough to a domain – architecture – that has only partially changed since the ancient times. If Burj Khalifa skyscraper managed to exceed the height of 800m in Dubai thanks it’s amazing supporting structure, the basic materials used in residential housing remain far from innovations and virtually unchanged: bricks, wood, ceramics. That is what Luis Alonso Pastor, architect and researcher at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, is trying to change.
Through his applied research, Alonso devised a new type of material that would affect not only the way buildings would behave in terms of energy – becoming more efficient of course – but also the way they would be designed. Alonso's dream as an architect is to have as much flexibility as possible in the way he can plan space within a building, and avoid the constraints imposed by traditional materials. In particular, he focused on a new material ensuring great sound and thermal insulation, but unlike current materials, is extremely thin, robust, and light. A cryptic name, F2TE3, identifies such material, but its characteristics are well real. The base component is a granular aerogel, which is well known for its thermal insulation properties, to which Alonso applied vacuum technologies to extract the oxygen contained in the tiny bubbles within the material to further increase its insulating power. As Alonso explains, “a 3,5cm wall of this material would ensure the same insulating properties as a 30cm brick wall.”
What is most innovative though, is that the degree of transparency of this material can be modulated depending on its use, and therefore find application both in glass-style facades, and as internal divisory panels. This is due to the covering layers, made of polymetilmetacrilate (PMMA) with indium-doped tin oxide (ITO). The result allow visible light to go through as in any transparent glass, but not ultraviolet and infrared light, which avoids the greenhouse effect that makes living in entirely glass-made structures challenging. Different versions of F2TE3 exist, with different degrees of translucency, which can be combined to achieve practical yet innovative and creative plans of the internal distribution of space and rooms meeting the different needs and functions of each room.
“This material can have an overall lifetime of 50 years without significant degradation of its properties” clarifies Alonso, who is committed to an ecologic full lifecycle of his material, “and it can be entirely recycled.”
Certainly, the road to full commercialization is still long and F2TE3 must prove not only superior in terms of physical characteristics, but also suitable for large, cost-effective adoption. That is why Alonso sealed a partnership with SEPAREX, a French company specialised in “critical” materials for applications in different fields ranging from microelectronics to the oil & gas industry. In the hope that, one day, F2TE3 will become a common element of our daily life."
