Plastics Now: On Architecture’s Relationship to a Continuously Emerging Material

by Billie Faircloth

Plastics Now addresses one primary why do we build with plastics the way that we do? For decades, plastics have been described over and over again as "the future," yet we still do not know precisely what to do with them. Billie Faircloth argues that this inertia is due to plastics’ indecipherability, which has prevented them from becoming fully known. The author tracks the process by which plastics became defined as a class of building materials. Drawing on original data from industry press, original timelines, hundreds of historical and contemporary images, advertisements dating to the 1940s, and technical data, this unconventional book explores the emergence of plastics as a building material and presents new findings. Plastics Now takes a provocative approach that calls on architects to participate in the redefinition of plastics for our time. This is essential reading for professional architects and architecture students to engage with our shared history with the plastics industry.

392 pages, Hardcover

First published May 4, 2015