The innovative design and synthesis of transformational building materials can significantly advance efforts directed at catalyzing economic development at the regional scale through narrowing the global infrastructure gap. Building materials account for one-third of the total cost of construction. Thus, transformational use of sustainable building materials would result in significant financial benefits by reducing construction costs while also enhancing the optimal use of scarce materials in more sustainable and durable building systems. There is a broad scope for attaining these ecological and money-related performance targets through novel and innovative use of building materials. These range from incremental improvements regarding traditional materials and existing characteristics, to syntheses of new material combinations with additional multi-functional characteristics, to radical innovations in materials with entirely new functionalities (World Economic Forum, 2016). These vast opportunities for innovation have attracted a lot of attention from researchers across the globe. This notwithstanding, the existing market-ready building materials cannot be deployed easily in a low-income context at scales matching the existing needs. Across the globe, an estimated 330 million urban residents occupy housing units that are either structurally substandard or financially unsustainable. At least 60 million households in the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Australia spend a disproportionately large part of their income on housing costs. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that, at a federally mandated rate of $7.25, minimum wage renters in the US need to work between 94.5 and 117 hours per week to afford modest one- and two-bedroom and one-bedroom homes respectively.