Frequently Asked Questions

Is Material Sense a library?

In fact we are not. Simone de Waart, founder of Material Sense once initiated the materials library especially for the students and professionals at the educational institutes TU/e Industral design and Design Academy Eindhoven, in here role as go between. Simone lectures herself and finds it important for students to get acquainted with the physical aspects of materials thus you need a library as source of information and inspiration.The library initiative is taken up further by the institutes and Material Sense remains as independent network for materials innovation.
We have our own archive of materials that is used in advisory and projects and for our international traveling exhibitions.

How do you spread materials knowledge and inspiration?

We create and collect overviews of actual developments in the materials world around a specific theme. This exhibitions travels around and can be seen, touched and experienced by visitors at many different locations. Materials, products or prototypes will be returned to the owners when travelling ends. Materials developments are rapidly changing and developing, so we have chosen this form to give an actual overview of the time the exhibition is made and travelling around. The exhibitions will follow the changes and growth according to the organic movements in the materials world.
Check our website (that you will find under news and presentations) for  visiting the current exhibitions and locations. Many exhibition themes have been published in a booklet or dvd to maintain the sources of inspiration for you. You can check at publications to see what we can offer you. 

How can you support us in our materials related questions?

Materials questions can be very specific and needs some more investigation to provide the rights answers and examples. We like that, and challenge the support of  development processes and provoke new developments in materials where you as user needs them. We support you with single advises starting with just a few hours of research, we can help you find the right people for further development (that we attract from our network strongly build up over the last nine years) and sometimes we develop new applications together with you, the teammates or the stakeholders that you need.
Please inform us via mail or phone for an indication, because these made to measure activities range from a few hours up to a longer term project support. We give you an indication for free off course.

Are you specialised in any material specifically?

It has a meaning that we are not; we believe in innovations driven by technology transfer and creative unexpected synergy between different worlds and views, so the materials scope is broad. We are able to grab solutions from different fields, from science, industry and design and broaden and fuel the knowledge all the time. Design functions as the distinction for new materials development and application and we stay closely related to product application which can be explained from our background of industrial design. But we do focus on two specific issues; that means the interactivity of materials, given by the integration of new technologies and off course sustainability for the use of materials.

Any other new question?

We answered tot the questions we regularly receives. There might be more or new questions......please feel free to send us yours to mail@materialsense.com