Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Our Homes The Story of by Simone Woods Why the story of materials is really the story of civilisation. Mark Miodownik photographed on the roof of his home in London by Suki Dhanda for the Observer New Review. Mark Miodownik photographed on the roof of his home in London by Suki Dhanda for the Observer New Review. E verything is made of something. Take away concrete, glass, textiles, metal, and the other materials from our lives and we are left naked, shivering in a muddy field. The sophistication of our lives is in a large part bestowed by material wealth, we would quickly revert to animal behaviour without the stuff of our civilisation: what makes us human is our clothes, our homes, our cities, our things, which we animate through our customs and language. This becomes very apparent if you ever visit a disaster zone. Thus the material world is not just a display of our technology and culture, it is part of us, we invented it, we made it and it makes us who we are. The fundamental importance of materials is made clear from the naming of ages of civilisations – the stone, iron and bronze ages – with each new era being brought about by a new material. Iron and steel were the defining materials of the Victorian era, allowing engineers to give full rein to their dreams of creating suspension bridges, railways, steam engines and passenger liners. Isambard Kingdom Brunel used them as a manifesto to transform the landscape and sow the seeds of modernism. The 20th century is often hailed as the age of silicon, after the breakthrough in materials science that ushered in the silicon chip and the information revolution. Yet a kaleidoscope of other new materials also revolutionised modern living. Architects took mass-produced sheet glass and combined it with structural steel to produce skyscrapers that invented a new type of city life. Plastics transformed our homes and dress. Polymers were used to produce celluloid and ushered in a new visual culture, the cinema. The development of aluminium alloys and nickel superalloys enabled us to fly cheaply and accelerated the collision of cultures. Medical and dental ceramics allowed us to rebuild ourselves and redefine disability and ageing – and as the term "plastic surgery" implies, materials are often the key to new treatments used to repair our faculties (hip replacements) or enhance our features (silicone implants for breast enlargement). My obsession with materials started as a teenager. I was puzzled by their obscurity, despite being all around us. How many people can spot the difference between aluminium and steel? Woods are clearly different from one another, but how many people can say why? Plastics are confusing; who knows the difference between polythene and polypropylene? Eventually I enrolled in a degree at Oxford University's material science department, went on to do a PhD in jet engine alloys and am now professor of materials and society and director of the Institute of Making at University College London. On my journey I have found a hidden world of makers who create the stuff on which we all rely, from aircraft manufacturers to clothing makers. Materials are at the heart of every company I visit and it is hard not to conclude that although Google and Twitter may dominate technology headlines, and cosmologists may be most popular with the media, materials transformation is still what makes the world go around. Starting next week in a new series of columns for Observer Tech Monthly I am going to tell the story of stuff. Each month I will pick a different material and uncover the human needs and desires that brought it into being, and decode the materials science and engineering behind it. Along the way, we will find that the real differences between materials are deep below the surface, a world that is shut off from most unless they have access to sophisticated scientific equipment. So to understand materiality is necessarily a journey into the inner space of materials. Pretty much the whole of materials science is concerned with the microscopic worlds. Doing so explains why some materials smell and others are odourless; why some can last for 1,000 years and others crumble in the sun; how some glass can be bulletproof, while a wine glass shatters at the slightest impact. The journey into this microscopic world reveals the science behind our food, our clothes, our gadgets, our jewellery, and of course our bodies. Some of Mark's sample materials at the Institute of Making, University College London. Take for example, a piece of thread, which exists at the same scale as hair. It is a synthetic structure at the limit of our eyesight that has allowed us to make ropes, blankets, carpets, but most importantly, clothes. Textiles are one of the earliest synthetic materials; when we wear a pair of jeans we are wearing a miniature woven structure, the design of which is older than Stonehenge. Clothes have kept us warm and protected for all of recorded history, as well keeping us fashionable. But they are hi-tech too. In the 20th century we learnt how to make space suits from textiles strong enough to protect astronauts on the moon as well as solid textiles for artificial limbs called carbon fibre composites. But there is more to materials than the science. Those who make things all have a different understanding of the practical, emotional and sensual aspect of their materials. For instance, we know the sounds of the doors in our houses, and can distinguish between someone leaving or entering from the subtle differences in keys rattling and hinges creaking. As a child I could always tell whether it was my mother or my father coming up the stairs, from the subtle differences in the sound of the creaky stairs. These acoustic personalities of buildings are often overlooked during the design process. Carpet makes a room feel warmer but also changes the acoustic signature of the room. The clickity-clack of high heels and the party they announce are muted; the squeak of rubber tennis soles and the sport they anticipate is banished; the comforting solid thump of sensible shoes on their way to work is no longer proclaimed. Installing carpet is a kind of auditory gag, which may of course be used intentionally for that purpose such as when designers want to create a sense of intimacy and calm. It is this diversity of material knowledge that I intend to capture in these columns. Because materials are built from atoms, we cannot avoid talking aboutthe rules that govern them, which are described by quantum mechanics. This means that as we enter the atomic world, we must abandon commonsense, and talk instead of wave functions and electron states. More materials are being designed from scratch at this scale, and can perform seemingly impossible tasks. Silicon chips designed using quantum mechanics have already brought about the information age. Silicon is now changing the way we light our homes (light emitting diodes) and harvest energy from the sun (solar cells). The central idea behind materials science is that changes at invisibly small scales manifest themselves as changes in a material's behaviour at the human scale. It is this process that our ancestors stumbled upon to make bronze and steel, even though they did not have the microscopes to see what they were doing – an amazing achievement. When you hit a piece of metal you are not just changing its shape, you are changing the inner structure of the metal, which is why metals get harder when you hit them. Our ancestors knew this from experience but didn't know why. Nevertheless this gradual accumulation of knowledge got us to the 20th century before any real appreciation of the structure of materials was understood. In these columns I will be championing this skill of making. This is not just because it is the hallmark of human civilisation but because the deindustrialisation of the developed world has devalued making. Making is not just an economic activity, it is the equal of literature, performance or mathematics as a form of human expression. By eschewing material knowledge we cease to understand the world around us. We wring our hands about climate change or urban sprawl without any recognition that our ignorance of materiality might be the cause. We feel proud of the technological marvel that is a smartphone, and yet we upgrade – ditch one for a newer model – at the first opportunity. We may assuage our conscience by hoping that they are recycled with some technology equal in sophistication to their fabrication techniques but they are not; most are disposed of in industrial blenders. The ages of civilisation are named after materials precisely because they transformed and shaped society. By distancing ourselves from the act of making,by buying and consuming stuff but never having any experience of their manufacture, the developed world finds itself not to be the illiterate society that education ministers fear, but an unmakerly society. In my view this practical ignorance is every bit as dangerous to a modern democracy as a lack of literacy. By swapping a material and industrial understanding of the world for one based on facts and information, we find ourselves uncivilised in a different way. This series of columns won't be an exhaustive survey of materials, nor a catalogue of the most important ones. But I will aim to capture the fabric of our lives through materiality. After all, everything is made of something. Ashton Woods. Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh, Tampa, Killeen – Fort Hood, San Antonio. Ashton Woods Wins A.R.E Design Award for The Studio in Phoenix. The Studio in Phoenix Wins Gold Award for Service Retailer at the A.R.E Design Awards in Las Vegas. Ashton Woods, one of the nation’s largest private homebuilding companies, is proud to announce that The Studio by Ashton Woods in Phoenix was named the Gold Award winner in the Service Retailer category at the Association for Retail Environments (A.R.E.) Design Awards in Las Vegas. The highly coveted award solidifies Ashton Woods’ commitment to exceptional design and its ability to deliver its customers unrivaled possibilities in homebuilding at The Studio. “At Ashton Woods, we collaborate with our homebuyers to discover their source of inspiration and build homes that are a true reflection of their styles and passions,” said Carrie Schonberg, VP of Marketing at Ashton Woods. “We believe that every home’s design tells a story. And at The Studio in Phoenix, our team of experienced design consultants works together with homebuyers to build a home that tells their own unique story and brings their vision to life.” The Studio by Ashton Woods is where design, personalization and possibilities come to life. The Studio in Phoenix received the Gold Award recognition for its state-of-the-art facility designed in partnership with Anna Simone of Cecconi Simone, Inc., an internationally renowned design firm based in Toronto. She has worked with Ashton Woods to design new Studios in several other markets, including Raleigh, NC, Charleston, SC, and Houston, TX, creating the ultimate destination for customers to collaborate with Ashton Woods’ team of experts to design truly inspired homes. “It is a true honor to be recognized in the company of design leaders such as Polo Ralph Lauren and Chanel,” said Ken Balogh, CEO of Ashton Woods. “Our commitment to excellence in design is at the core of who we are and what we deliver in each of our homes and communities at Ashton Woods, and we are thrilled that this recognition from the Association for Retail Environments reinforces our trailblazing approach to delivering high design to our customers.” The Studio in Phoenix opened its doors to the public in September 2014, and has been delighting customers ever since. Ashton Woods was named the winner of the prestigious Gold Award among more than 65 renowned international design projects, competing against the likes of Chanel, Nike, Polo Ralph Lauren, Uniqulo and Whole Foods. The Best Documentaries of 2021 Challenge Our Memory of the Past. From Tiger Woods and Pelé to Billie Eilish and the Night Stalker, the best documentaries prove there's no story like a true story. At this stage in the boom times of prestige documentaries, there are a few things you can rely on seeing every year. Among them: the Defining Portrait of a sports icon, most recently found in Tiger and The Last Dance . Then there's the batshit Netflix true crime doc, featuring the Joe Exotics and Carol Baskins of the world. Finally, you're likely to have a supposedly candid look at a modern-day pop star, something like Miss Americana or ariana grande: excuse me, i love you . If you're a fan of any of the three categories, some good news: 2021's slate of documentaries is stuffed with all three. We're finally getting a Pelé documentary with the elusive involvement of Pelé. Some behind-the-scenes action with Billie Eilish and The Beatles. And yes, in Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer , even the Netflix-branded true crime watch. Here are the best (and most anticipated) documentaries of the year so far. Tiger didn't tell the story of Tiger Woods, who has been championed and derided so many times that he's probably even losing count. It rewrites it. Directors Matthew Heineman and Matthew Hamacheck put together a two-part documentary that shows who the villains were in Tiger's story all along—the tabloid media, who tried to take him down at nearly every turn of his career. As long as the sun rises every morning, there will always be a gruesome true crime documentary trending on Netflix. The genre is rarely at its most shocking than in Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer , which details the crimes of Richard Ramirez, who terrorized California in the '80s. You might not hear much about Acasa, My Home this awards season (hopefully, we're wrong about that), but this potential Sundance hit might just be one of the best films you'll watch this year. Period. Acasa, My Home follows a large family who, after living in the rural Bucharest Delta for 20 years, is forced to move and adapt to the city. Yes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is regarded in 2021 as an American hero—but don't forget how he was treated and viewed during the Civil Rights movement. MLK/FBI dives into the government's treatment of the activist as an enemy of the state, fueled by the racism of J. Edgar Hoover. The sports doc scene is knocking out each GOAT's life story, one by one. We had The Last Dance for Michael Jordan. Tiger for Tiger Woods. We'll soon have Man in the Arena for Tom Brady. Next up? Netflix's Pelé , which will feature rare interviews with the Brazilian soccer legend to tell the story of his unforgettable career. In Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry , we'll get a glimpse into the life of Eilish, following her on tour and during the making of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Here's hoping it'll be a little more enlightening than Taylor Swift's Miss Americana . Peter Jackson has been having quite a third act, revisiting and recutting archival footage into documentary-film spectacles. (How did They Shall Not Grow Old slip so far under the radar?) Next up for Jackson: The Beatles: Get Back , which will show footage from the recording of the iconic album, Let It Be . Questlove's directing debut is far and beyond enough to sell us on Summer of Soul (… Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) . The subject is even more enticing: a deep dive on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which featured performances from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, and B.B. King. If the Nazi hunting in Amazon Prime's Hunters wasn't enough for you, keep an eye out for The Klarsfelds . The animated documentary will tell the true story of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, a husband-wife team of agents who took down several Nazi war criminals. For a ton of people—sports fans, especially—the coronavirus pandemic didn't become real until March 11, 2020. It's when the NBA shut down its season after Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19. It caused a whiplash-inducing shutdown of nearly every other sports league, leaving an entire industry at a standstill. HBO's The Day Sports Stood Still stands to be the definitive oral history of that day, interviewing the athletes and reporters who were right in the middle of the chaos. Competing with kidney stone, Simone Biles' performance at world championships is that of a legend. DOHA, Qatar -- Most people could barely get out of bed with a kidney stone. Simone Biles definitely is not most people. Less than 24 hours after being in the emergency room with what she initially feared was appendicitis, Biles was practically flawless Saturday in qualifying at the world gymnastics championships. Her score of 60.965 was her highest since she returned to competition following a year layoff. It also was 4½ points better than teammate Morgan Hurd -- who happens to be the reigning world champion, mind you. As if it wasn’t already tough enough to come up with superlatives for Biles and what she does, good luck after this. “She’s Simone,” national team coordinator Tom Forster said. “You’d expect the same out of a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods, and that’s who she is in our sport. And she showed it.” Jordan’s flu game and Woods winning the 2008 U.S. Open on one leg transformed athletes we already considered exceptional into something even greater. Almost mythical. What Biles did here definitely puts her in that category. Biles said her back has been bothering her the last couple weeks, and she’d recently started having stomach pains. But she always gets stomach aches before a meet, so she didn’t give it too much thought. On Friday, though, the pain had gotten so bad that Biles was “kind of crawling on the floor,” and she joked to her mom that maybe she should go to the hospital. Nellie Biles was a nurse, and she didn’t see anything funny about the situation. So the night before her first world championships in three years, Biles found herself in the E.R. “(The doctor) was like, `We see a stone.’ You’re telling me I have a KIDNEY STONE? He’s like yes,” said Biles, who has dubbed her kidney stone “The Doha Pearl” because it’s so big. “I’m like, `OK, cool. So can I leave?’ … She’s like no, you might stay here,” Biles continued. “Sorry, I have to go compete, so I’m leaving. Thanks for letting me know I have a kidney stone. I’ll deal with the pain later!” It was after 1 a.m. by the time Biles got back to the team hotel. She skipped morning practice, and by the time she got up and started moving around, the pain had decreased. Still, she wasn’t taking any chances. “I’m trying not to move every time I do something just in case (the stone) moves,” she said. “Then I also hear roller coasters might help kidney stones, and I’m like my own roller coaster out there.” The Americans started on uneven bars, which has traditionally been Biles’ “worst” event. But she’s made vast improvements under new coach Laurent Landi, and her only flaw was a form break on her first handstand that left her legs wobbling. She flitted between the bars with the lightness of a humming bird, and broke into a grin after her dismount. Her score of 14.866 was the second-highest of the day, trailing only Nina Derwael of Belgium. “She’s two-tenths away from that Belgian girl, from Nina, so that isn’t bad,” Landi said. She also posted the highest scores of the day on balance beam and floor exercise, scores that aren’t likely to be topped by anyone despite the Russians and Chinese still to come on the second day of qualifying. And then there was what Biles did on vault. She debuted a vault -- she does a roundoff with a half-twist onto the vaulting table and then a front double full somersault off -- so ridiculously hard even some of the top men can’t pull it off. Yet Biles did it so effortlessly the uninitiated would have had no idea she was making history. The vault will now be known as “the Biles” in the women’s code. “When you’re ready, you’re ready. It’s what’s up in here,” Landi said, pointing at his head. Yes, but there are plenty of athletes who are exceptionally talented. There are plenty of athletes who are strong mentally. But there are very few who can blend them together in a performance that makes them iconic. Biles, without a doubt, is one of them. Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour. Want to see gymnast Simone Biles in person? Here is your chance. Simone Biles, who will be one of the superstars of this summer’s Tokyo Olympics. USA Gymnastics announced Wednesday that a limited number of all-session tickets are available for the GK U.S. Classic and Hopes Championships at the Indiana Convention Center. They are being sold through Ticketmaster. Senior sessions, in which Biles is to perform, are set for 1 and 7 p.m. Saturday. Junior sessions are at 1:45 and 6:45 p.m. Friday. The event is the last chance for female gymnasts to qualify for the June 3-6 nationals at Fort Worth, Texas. Biles, 24, last competed in Indianapolis in the 2015 nationals at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, leading up to her four gold medals at the Rio Olympics. She has 30 Olympic and World Championships medals, making her the most decorated American gymnast ever. She is a five-time all-around world champion and holds records for most world medals (25) and world golds (19). Biles is the sixth woman to win the all-around at both World Championships and Olympics, and the first since Lilia Podkopayeva (in 1996) to hold both titles simultaneously. Other entries include Jade Carey, Kara Eaker, Morgan Hurd, Sunisa Lee, Grace McCallum, Riley McCuster, MyKayla Skinner, Olympic silver medalist Chellsie Memmel and gold medalist Laurie Hernandez. Memmel, 32, is a mother of two who retired from gymnastics in 2012. She resumed training in 2019, and this will be her first meet in nine years.