The SOVAMAT Initiative and the SAM network

SOVAMAT is an Initiative of a Consortium of material producers, steel, non-ferrous metals, concrete, cardboard, wood, glass, plastics and composites, and of scientists in the continuum of fields extending from social sciences to engineering, who have something to say about the structural material basis of our societies.

SOVAMAT's overarching objectives are to identify the role of structural materials in the post-carbon society, which will emerge in the world in the course of the 21st century and prepare all the stakeholders of the materials value chain for the changes that are to come.

One important deliverable of the Initiative is a New Metrics, which would replace the methodologies and tools presently available and constitute a breakthrough.

Society and Materials - The SAM seminars

SAM seminars are special occasions to exchange ideas and to liaise with people who are working on the connection between society and materials, from the standpoint of social sciences, economics, life cycle thinking methodologies and material flow approaches. They are organized in parallel and in support of a series of research proposals to the European 7th Framework Program, under the umbrella of SOVAMAT.

SAM 1 in Seville (Spain, 2007),
SAM 2 in Nantes (France, 2008),
SAM 3 in Freiberg (Germany,2009)

NOTE THE DATE OF SAM 4 CONFERENCE !

April 2010, 28th and 29th in Nancy (France).

Final programme

Registration form

List of hotels

The SAM 4 themes:

1. Ecological and carbon footprints, or the life-cycle and value chain viewpoint brought to the consumer market

2. Carbon tax, border adjustment mechanisms and other CDMs, or how to reconcile North and South, post-modern and developing societies in a global economy and on a unique planet

3. Living and working, transport and cities, or how to live and work in the urbanized world of the 21st century

4. The promise of new technologies, or how to find a path way between legitimate projections, utopia and misplaced expectations

5. Industrial ecology, or how to build solidarity between neighbors in industrial parks, cities, regions and the world

6. Resource analysis, or how to design lasting and sustainable new products without hitting the resource barrier

7. Long-term foresight, or the role of materials in carbon-constrained and post-carbon societies

8. New and old, lasting and ephemeral, life, death and perenniality of products and services, or revisiting the reduce, reuse and recycling agenda

CAN WE IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT MATERIALS?

Materials have accompanied mankind along its long historical journey through time since the dawn of the Palaeolithic. The relationship has been fusional as materials have been used to make and help make homes, clothes, pots and pans, tools, machines, weapons, all the artefacts that distinguish human beings from animals. The connection with the environment has just been equally fusional as materials have been extracted out of natural resources - raw materials and energy, and have helped shape the landscape, the countries and the cities for mankind to live in.

This bond between materials and society will continue for a long time. Materials will continue to be ubiquitous. Material can even be found in the word dematerialization, a concept that questions the role that materials will play in society in the future.

By materials, we mean all the materials which have become part of human life as History rolled on: lithic materials, biomaterials and especially wood, metals, from gold to silver and bronze to iron as well as more modern materials, i.e. the materials of today, born from the meeting of mankind's arts and crafts with its scientific view of the world: ferrous and non-ferrous metals, including steel, zinc, aluminium, copper, lead and tin, cement and concrete, plastics and composites, etc.

The list covers most structural materials, but it can probably be argued that all materials should be included, as modern artefacts are a mixture of materials and functions at various levels of scale and complexity, for example in nano- and intelligent materials.

credit www.photo-libre.fr