Natural materials. A family on the move, but where is the last stop?

Understanding, using, imitating and exploiting nature are diffuse methods aimed at producing innovative materials and solutions able to interact with user and environment in an innovative and sustainable manner. The paper will propose some discussions on the current situation and on the future scenarios for the “natural materials” class. New natural materials (around 40 materials coming from different living kingdoms) have been studied through a multicriteria analysis, which considers the environmental impact of materials, in a qualitative way, and their artificial thickness. How much these new materials can be considered natural and whether or not their artificial thickness is still compatible with the definition of natural will be two leading questions in the contribution. The work will open a discussion on the difference between a “natural material” and a “sustainable material”, with attention to the aspects of renewability of resources, end of life scenarios, productive chain length and artificial thickness.