Acelab, a materials and construction products startup with $13 million in funding has released Materials Hub, an artificial intelligence-powered repository that allows architects and designers to discover, evaluate and specify building materials. Launched March 3, the platform uses AI along with a firm’s institutional knowledge, via their in-house product and material libraries, to help address challenges of material selection in modern architecture.

Materials Hub has information like connection detail in its recommendations.
Screenshot courtesy of Acelab

Material Matters

Many technology companies and service providers have tried to tackle materials selection and specification with software-as-a-service platforms since 3D building information modeling arose over 20 years ago. But Acelab is adding its own BIM know-how as well, with more than 10,000 building materials and more than 900 product certifications in its hub database. There are more than 1,000 manufacturers represented in the Acelab platform, with more than 50,000 specific products across 25 categories such as windows, doors, cladding, roofing and insulation.

“The world of architecture is at a critical juncture where material choices have never been more important,” said Dave Lemont, Acelab executive chairman and former CEO of software provider Revit before its 2002 acquisition by Autodesk, in a statement. “By combining AI-powered search with collaborative tools and a firm’s own project history, we’ve created a platform that will change the world of material selection. This is exactly what the industry needs to move forward and create a more sustainable built environment.”

Acelab captures and digitizes a firm’s materials library, which can be held in project-based spreadsheets or even physical samples. Specifiers can ask the Materials Hub AI questions such as “show me slip-resistant tiles for freeze-thaw conditions,” and receive precise answers. Materials Hub has data from more than 100,000 building materials and can work with specific architectural terminology.

Acelab is also willing to work with architects to customize Materials Hub for their uses and product libraries. “One thing that we really got intrigued about on the platform was we have to have an open spec for all of our projects,” said Lena Reiff, designer at Ross Barney Architects in Chicago, whose work on public buildings often requires presenting a client with several options. “We have to have at least three products that can all do relatively the same thing. It’s actually very tricky,” she pointed out. “We can’t just spec one thing, and so we started using it for that, and we were able to find multiple materials that had similarities with each other.”

Reiff said using an AI for materials research offers significant time savings for higher-value design work. “This shows how good a resource [AI] can be. It’s able to assist you in the research and it doesn’t make the decisions for you.”

At design firm KieranTimberlake in Philadelphia, Associate and Technical Director Steven Johns said Acelab worked with the firm to digitize its materials database and set up a permissions structure to manage it. “A lot of the research is stuck either on a project, in an email somewhere or in a PowerPoint presentation to a client,” Johns said. “That information tends to get forgotten about as the project ... fades into the history books.”

Johns added that however his team decided to select a particular material, or why they chose to pass on it, is functionally as important as the project closeout in terms of what KieranTimberlake wants captured in its materials hub.