Choosing building materials is a delicate balance of factors – looks, quality, price, environmental impact and sustainability all contribute to the success and overall value of the product. When data about building materials are illegible or biased, the construction process can become convoluted and compromise the final structure, straining the architect’s role in the process.

Hoping to streamline and vet a resource for the overall health and utility of building materials, Google, Healthy Building Network (HBN), Flux, and thinkstep have formed The Quartz database: a place where AEC professionals as well as the general public can review a “common dataset” of building materials’ effects on both human and environmental health, ultimately to support a more sustainable built environment.

Born out of the year-old Quartz Project, which was (according to a Quartz press release) formed to “promote the transparency of building product information”, the Quartz database aims to create a new AEC industry standard in building material information; a “vendor-agnostic” place to review and balance the pros and cons of different building materials.

According to Google Campus Design Technical Specialist Drew Wenzel, “In our experience, the process of vetting commonly used building products is very complex, consumes a substantial amount of resources, and does not scale well. The Quartz Project is providing actionable health and environmental data that project teams can use to efficiently and reliably make decisions based on these factors at a much earlier stage in the design process.”

The collaborators behind the Quartz Project all operate at the intersection of technology and the creation of sustainable environments through better building materials: Flux, an offshoot of Google[x], builds collaboration tools to ease communications between different building professionals; the Healthy Building Network nonprofit aims to reduce the incidence of toxic materials in the built environment; and thinkstep, which provides sustainability software and services.

The Quartz database will be officially unveiled at the VERGE 2015 Conference tomorrow, October 28, in San Jose, California. See below for a preview of the kind of building material profiles that Quartz provides (courtesy of Quartz's press release):

• Quartz is a free and open dataset, integrating both LCA and health-hazard data into a single information source using widely accepted and consistent methodologies, such as Pharos Project/GreenScreen hazard screening, TRACI 2.1, and ISO14044.
• Data is vendor-neutral and covers 100 building products across a range of categories, such as concrete, drywall and insulation. Products are compared by composition, health impacts, and environmental impacts.
• Data is licensed under Creative Commons BY 4.0, meaning there is no restriction on the use, redistribution, or modification of the data.  This openness will enable the AEC community and the general public to become more educated about the potential impacts of materials in buildings and communities, and to put this data to creative and productive use.
• Through consistent language and metrics, stakeholders will be empowered to have productive dialogue with building products manufacturers, driving the industry towards increased sustainability.

Flux is also currently hiring on Archinect.