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The Thaden School, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects with master planning by Eskew Dumez Ripple and landscapes by Andropogon Associates, was awarded the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize this year. The interiors feature a faceted plywood ceiling. Photo COURTESY © TIMOTHY HURSLEY

September 17, 2025

How a Fresh Materials Mindset Can Transform Your Projects

METROPOLIS’s Products 2025 issue explores inspired material alternatives that prevent harm, do good, and expand what’s possible in design.

By: Avinash Rajagopal

MARLON BLACKWELL said something quite profound to me when I sat down with him and Meryati Blackwell for a deep dive into their creative process. “If it’s a good idea,” he quipped, “it can be realized at multiple price points.”

He was talking about the ceiling at the much-lauded Thaden School: a faceted surface that creates variation and excitement in every classroom, hides all the mechanics and ductwork, and adds to both the acoustic and visual comfort of the school. The client’s original aspiration was the reclaimed oak paneling in the Kieran Timberlake–designed Sidwell Friends school in Washington, D.C., but the ceiling the Blackwells gave them is made of AC plywood—“the cheapest wood you could find anywhere,” in Marlon’s words—and is no less functional or beautiful.

The Blackwells remind us that materials should never be a constraint for creative vision. Instead they should become conduits for expression and real impact. Every architect and interior designer knows the pain of navigating the matrix of cost, aesthetics, performance characteristics, durability, and sustainability to arrive at the final product selections for a project, and sometimes the way of avoiding that pain is to pick what you know has worked in the past. 

But if you shift your mindset, then the matrix of considerations needn’t limit your options. 

Marlon and Meryati Johari Blackwell, founders of Marlon Blackwell Architects, in their Fayetteville, Arkansas, studio. Photo: Melissa Lukenbaugh

The teams at HLW, IA Interior Architects, and Page discovered this for themselves when they added lower embodied carbon emissions to their set of goals on recent projects. Low-carbon choices resulted in cost savings for United Airlines, a healthier office for Lord Abbett, and a more harmonious fit between the base building and the organization’s needs in the case of Page’s own Austin office.

Rarify’s David Rosenwasser and Jeremy Bilotti at the company’s warehouse in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Photo: Michelle Gustafson

Zoom in on a single product category, and this point becomes even clearer. Most studies show that furniture has the biggest carbon impact in an office renovation, but it has also never been more exciting to make low-carbon choices in furniture! If you work with e-commerce platform Rarify, you can have design icons in your project while lowering costs and carbon emissions. Want to stick with a major furniture manufacturer for the advantages of scale and customer service? Haworth, Steelcase, and Flokk are all retooling their offerings to incorporate more circularity. And if you want to get even edgier, Heller now offers its entire range of beautifully designed furniture in a biodegradable material.

In fact, this issue is simply full of inspired material alternatives, from the rediscovery of wool, as written in the article “Should Wool Play a Bigger Role in the Built Environment?,” to new developments in metals, as outlined in the article “Lighter, Smarter, Stronger Metals.” 

Remember Marlon Blackwell’s insight: Good ideas can be realized in a myriad of ways. You have the power to make choices that prevent harm and do good in the world. Use the articles from this issue to pick one better option, at least, and don’t hesitate to ask METROPOLIS for support if you find yourself in a materials quandary—we’re always just a message away on Instagram and LinkedIn, @metropolismag. 

Read every story from our 2025 Products Issue:

Features

New Releases

Metal

Workplace

Textiles and Acoustics

Circularity

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