Located on the San Francisco campus, the New Materials Resource Center offers a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection of new and innovative samples.

To see what's available in the Center, search the CCA New Materials Database. These are materials you can see on site at the SF campus.

You can also access our subscription to the Material ConneXion database to find more material samples online. (Click "Guest" for on-campus access or create an account when you're on-campus to access the database from home in the future.)

Accessing the Resource Center

The resource center is located at 1111 Eighth Street. The CCA community of students, faculty, staff, alumni and donors enjoy free access to the resource center for individual research or class use.

During the school year, the center is staffed by a part-time curator; for hours of operation and other information, call 415.551.9266 or email matlib [at] cca [dot] edu. When classes are not in session, call the Simpson Library 415.703.9574 to inquire about access.

A Collection for the Imagination

The resource center's display racks hold colorful tufts of synthetic fur, futuristic-looking aluminum foam, and a host of other new and unusual materials.

The collection currently includes over eighteen hundred samples, cataloged in a database searchable by properties, usage, or manufacturer.

The resource center is meant to inspire designers to focus on the materiality of things, rather than on obvious practical applications. For example, the resource center contains a sample of woven polypropylene. It's a mist eliminator screen, with applications for projects such as greenhouse design—but in basic black, it's also something that might spark a fashion designer's imagination.

Eco-Friendly Materials

The resource center has a special interest in eco-friendly materials such as Phenix Biocomposites' Environ, a composite designed for use in countertops; it looks like stone but is actually made of compressed newspaper.

Development of the Resource Center

In development since 1999, the resource center was funded by three major grants from the George Frederick Jewett Foundation (for a total of $75,000).

Leslie Speer, David Meckel, Tim Perks, Tylor Garland, and Matt Paprocki were instrumental in getting the project off the ground.

The center is now administered by the CCA Libraries under the direction of Michael Lordi mlordi [at] cca [dot] edu.