New Materials for Ecological Building Products

In this chapter, recent activities of our research group in the field of innovative materials are shown, inspired by the need of developing and using lower impact and better performing materials. Examples of use of materials from renewable resources, of biopolymers, of innovative reinforcing fibres and of hybrid organic–inorganic composites are discussed. The aim is to better integrate the approaches of material engineering with the issues emerging from sustainable architecture by exploiting the potential in lowering the overall impact of different kinds of materials. The output will be that of obtaining building products with a de-materialized production process, i.e. which can reduce at minimum the use of matter and energy during the various stages of the production itself, which can be bio-compatible during all the phases of the life cycle and which can preview a dismissing process at closed cycle so as to avoid as much as possible the impacts to ecosystems. In particular, this chapters deals with the opportunity of applying those innovative materials to building components.