Construction is one of the world’s oldest industries, with the oldest known construction plans – for the Temple of Apollo at Didyma, in Greece – drawn up in the fourth century B.C., around 2,400 years ago.

Things have come a long way since then, including the materials used in construction. We don’t generally fabricate institutional or commercial buildings out of limestone and mud brick anymore – instead, we use materials such as exposed structural steel, structural glazing, and hurricane-resistant windows.

Indeed, more novel construction materials – many more efficient, stronger, and better for the environment every year than their predecessors – push into the mainstream each year. Here are some of the most promising new construction materials available today.

Carbon-fiber reinforced concrete

This new type of concrete replaces steel rebar with carbon fiber woven into a mesh, making the material lighter than traditional reinforced concrete while retaining its robustness. That means much less material is needed to build a structure of similar strength – such as The Cube in Dresden, pictured below. It’s a product of German architecture firm Henn and the Technical University of Dresden.

Self-repairing concrete

Traditional concrete is prone to disintegration, cracking, efflorescence, and other unpleasant issues. But an innovation from Delf University of Technology in the Netherlands may change all that.

The novel construction materials technology uses bacteria to repair cracked concrete. By adding capsules containing certain types of bacteria, their required nutrients, and water, the bacteria turns into limestone and fills the cracks.

Other types of self-healing concrete include another type invented in Korea that uses polymers and moisture to fill cracks in concrete and bio-concrete from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) that uses enzymes and calcium carbonate crystals to fill cracks and improve the material’s strength.

Carbon-sequestering CarbiCrete

Traditional concrete is said to be responsible for between four and eight percent of all global emissions. CarbiCrete, a Quebec-based company, offers “carbon-negative concrete” developed at McGill University in Montreal. The process uses slag from steel factories instead of cement as a binding agent in precast concrete, injecting carbon dioxide into the concrete to provide added strength and act as a carbon sink.

Transparent Aluminum

Aluminum oxynitride (AION) ceramics have been around since the 1980s, so they’re not exactly brand new, but are beginning to get buzz in the impact-resistant glass world because of their glass-like appearance and toughness. AION ceramics can withstand heat of up to 2,100 degrees celsius; resist radiation, acids, alkalis, and water; and a manufactured version by Surmet called ALON can stop a 50-caliber rifle round (an extremely heavy and powerful bullet).

Surmet partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense on ALON’s development and made it commercially available around 2015. The only downside? It’s around 5x more expensive than traditional laminated glass, according to Hackaday.

Hydroceramics

Developed in 2014 at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Spain, hydroceramics are made of clay and hydrogel. Novel construction materials like hydroceramics are capable of cooling building interiors by up to six degrees celsius. They can also save building operators nearly 30 percent on cooling energy consumption.

The material does this by absorbing around 500x its weight in water. Considering the summer we had in 2023, it’s probably not surprising that this material is now in high demand in the building industry.

2DPA-1 Plastic

2DPA-1 super-strong plastic is twice as strong as steel and much more lightweight. Invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), it is a two-dimensional polymer that “self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains,” according to MIT. It’s around 4x to 6x stronger than bulletproof glass, and is impermeable to gases thanks to monomers that perfectly fit together like building blocks.

While the uses for such a material are broad – especially for ultra-light yet strong structural reinforcement materials for building projects – it’s now mostly used as a thin coating to enhance object durability.

Biochar

Construction projects generate an estimated one-third of the world’s overall waste and nearly half of all carbon emissions. And while many new materials are more eco-friendly than standard mediums, the biochar cladding produced by German firm Made of Air takes things further by creating bioplastic from forest and farm waste. The material can sequester carbon, and much like CarbiCrete is marketed as a carbon-negative building product. Builders often use it to make cladding.

The company’s biochar product was recently used to form the exterior of an Audi dealership in Munich, Germany, which the company says stores 14 tonnes of carbon.

Hemp rebar

A lower-cost alternative to steel rebar made partially from hemp was recently invented at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York. Hemp rebar avoids the corrosion and premature decay that’s so noticeable under bridges and other structures that use steel rebar, but isn’t widely used in the construction industry – yet.

“Because of corrosion, in environments with high salt concentration, concrete structures are given a lifetime of 40 to 50 years,” said co-project lead Alexandros Tsamis in Dezeen of these novel construction materials. “If the rebar was not corroding, it would be three times that much, and that would create a significant overall contribution to cutting carbon emissions, because you have three times more service life for every single thing you make.”

K-Briq construction waste bricks

K-Briq was invented at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University and is manufactured by Kenoteq in Scotland. It’s an unfired, low-carbon alternative to traditional bricks made of 90 percent construction waste. After coming onto the market in 2019 the material has won several awards, including the 2022 Dezeen Awards in Sustainable Design. K-Briqs are available for order in either standard or bespoke shapes and colors.

Potato-peel chipboard

Last but certainly not least are potato-peel chipboard panels, a sustainable building product dreamed up in London by designers Rowan Minkley and Robert Nicoll. The material can replace single-use items such as medium-density fiberboard (MDF) and traditional chipboard and can help divert some of the countless tons of potato peeling waste from french fries and other potato products.

What’s the Impact of New Construction Materials?

With inflation and climate change both major issues facing the construction industry (and, indeed, everyone else), it’s only natural that materials that reduce waste, retain carbon, and are cheaper and higher performing than traditional products will likely become even more mainstream.

Watch for them to turn up soon at a construction site near you.