Our new Architonic Trend Analysis series is anything but immaterial. Hence our look at materials and their relative popularity – by active text-search on architonic.com – over the past three years.

It’s in the nature of trends to wax and wane, and a comparative analysis of the most searched-for key materials from 2011 to 2014 reveals directions and tendancies that are no exception to this.

It seems our love affair with wood – one of the most ancient materials used for construction and fabrication – is far from over, heading up as it does our top-ten ranking by a country mile. Drilling down into wood (no pun intended) as a sub-category, it’s fascinating to see bamboo slip from its top position in 2011 – a time when it’s fair to say it was enjoying a certain hype – to be replaced by that long-standing and eminently trusted of materials oak, which has, in terms of search popularity, experienced a boost since 2013. The popularity of teak – a staple of mid-century, Scandinavian furniture design – walnut and cork is seen to flucuate over the three-year period, but in each case, utimately, to hold its ground.

When it comes to metal types (‘metal’ as a generic search term coming in third in our ranking, after ‘wood’ and ‘glass’), steel has, between 2011 and 2014, maintained a relatively stable position, by far the most popular metallic material on architonic.com. What’s equally interesting to note is the jostling going on for the title of second most-popular metal: aluminium has seen a gradual decline in its position, with copper and brass enjoying a renaissance. Iron occupies fifth place when it comes to metals, but, nonetheless, between 2013 and 2014, has seen a rise in its popularity.