Today, architects and designers are beginning to look toward developments in new "smart" or "intelligent" materials and technologies for solutions to long-standing problems in building design. Unlike typical architectural material, whose fixed properties are at best a compromise within a complex building system, these new materials have properties that can be designed to be changeable in response to changes in the surrounding environment. Smart materials can be are color changing materials such as photochromics that change color when subjected to light and heat, light-emitting electroluminescents; shape changing polymeric gels and shape memory alloys. However, these new materials have so far been applied in a diverse but largely idiosyncratic nature, because relatively few architects have access to information about the types or properties of these new materials or technologies.