Textiles in Architecture

Architectural Design, 2006

A hybrid term, 'architextiles' encompasses a wide range of projects and ways of thinking that unite architecture and textiles. By way of introduction to this issue, guest-editor Mark Garcia highlights the significant rise of interest in this confluence by theorists, architects, engineers, textile ...

2016

This paper presents an enquiry into how to inform material systems that allow for a high degree of variation and gradation of their material composition. Presenting knit as a particular system of material fabrication, we discuss how new practices that integrate material design into the architectural design chain presents new opportunities and challenges to how we understand and create cycles of design, analysis, specification and fabrication. By tracing current interdisciplinary efforts in establishing simulation methods for knitted textiles, our aim is to question how these efforts can be understood and extended in the context of knitted architectural textiles. The paper draws on a number of projects that prototype methods for using simulation and sensing as grounds for informing the design of complex, heterogeneous and performative materials. It asks how these methods can allow feedback in the design chain and be interfaced with highly craft based methods of fabrication.

This paper discusses the various strategies for micro techniques and tectonics with macro variants to design and construct ephemeral architectures. As a starting point the work of Gottfried Semper is revisited to reveal the different qualities and characteristics of textile techniques and tectonics. To create an oversight of this content a matrix is used. From there, this diagram is evolved; state-of-the-art techniques and applications are added to create a contemporary overview. As part of the research several studies and case scenarios have been executed by the authors with a focus on the following topics.

2020

There was a continuation in utilizing and applying of fabrics (such as foils, fiberglass and some innovative fabrics) which became an inspiring tool in architecture both in construction and architecture, to suit various ideas and requests with notable impacts on building performance in comparison with other materials. The aim of this study is to identify the essential features of fabric materials and how the fabrics may promote the flexible architecture approach. It explores the role of the fabric in the innovative constructions by facilitating the techniques and principles of flexible architecture in design and construction to examine how the compatibility of cloth to be achieved. To attain the aim, the paper was based on SWOT analysis method as a way to examine the flexible approach of fabrics on the architectural performance.

enhsa Livelong Learning Programme: What's the Matter? Materiality and Materialism in the Age of Computing, 2014

The Truth of Architectural Matter – Textiles, Nature and the “Real Thing.” Etymology relates matter to the Latin word materia, meaning substance from which something is made but also meaning subject of a discourse and lastly relating to the term mother. [1] Physial Matter in architecture – its substance – points to construction materials and how they were formed to perform and to relate to a given site and culture. Immaterial Matter relates to the subject of architectural discourse that generates and accompanies the art of building. Architectural matter therefore is linked to both physical form and immaterial narrative of a building, to structure, enclosure and ornament. The question remains, how the physical and immaterial inform and shape each other, their unity possibly leading to the truth of the matter in architecture. This essay compares three different ways of approaching the origins of architectural matter, paralleling a search for architectural truth. All three approaches (Textile, Nature and the Real Thing) explore ideas related to the origin of architectural form and expression. They define matter as a product of the chosen design process, human skills and the world around them. Gottfried Semper traces the development of architectural tectonics, analyzing the relationship between materiality and craft. For Semper, the textile arts are essential, they are the origin of architecture and evolved when spaces were defined by sticks and woven enclosures. His analysis of historic architecture and its evolution highlights the transition from fabric to other building materials: the architectural ornament (according to Semper) maintains a relationship to the rules of the woven fabric even when turning into stone and plaster. John Ruskin suggests the abstracted line of the surface of a “glacier on a spur of the Aiguille de Blaitière Mountain in France” [2] as one meaningful form for architectural ornament and useful as the basis of finding truth. According to him, natural lines and outlines can be applied independent of scale or size and will lead to harmony and truth in architectural detail. Peter Zumthor states: “When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material.” [3] Looking for acoustic qualities, sensations of smell, the memory of touch, Zumthor places architectural truth (the real thing as he calls it) in the realm of perception. His goal is to bring out “specific meanings of certain materials.”[4] At the core of architecture is an ancient elemental knowledge, something primal, possibly archetypal that is universal rather than specific to a regional culture. All three examples express an affinity to the traces of the human craft as well as the formal and material resources of nature. The truth of the matter in architecture seems to reside in a complex triangle of making, material and emotion. Zumthor summarizes what all three examples have in common: “The real thing exists but is endangered, it is found in earth, water, sun light but also in landscapes and vegetation.”[5] Notes: 1. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=matter 2. Ruskin, John, and J. G. Links. The Stones Of Venice. New York: Da Capo Press, 2003. Page 104 3. Robin Pogrebin, Pritzker Prize Goes to Peter Zumthor, The New York Times, April 12, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/arts/design/13pritzker.html?_r=0 (accessed June 1st, 2014) 4. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, 2012 5. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, 2012. 17

Cumulus 38 Degrees South 2009, Proceedings of the Cumulus Conference, pp.1-10, 2009

Innovation in material fibres and textile technologies is both informing and transforming approaches to textile design education, research and practice. New textiles challenge us to new ways of thinking about the connectivity of surface and form; the structural and ornamental; the responsive and intuitive. This is allowing for textile designers to engage in current design debates like never before. This paper will discuss the opportunities for 'wicked solutions' to emerge as demonstrated in a range of transdisciplinary projects between textile design, architecture and industrial design at RMIT University.

2011

In this research we examine the use of textile building elements and investigate on their potential scope of application in architecture. Other than commonly used for spanned or tent-like structures we concentrate on the use of textiles for folded, crinkled and procumbent assemblies, as these seem to correspond much better with the textiles ́ inherent properties. On closer examination of these properties it becomes obvious that textiles primarily exist in a loose, uneven and irregular physicality that can be adjusted and configured into different states that match specific criteria. That is why textiles are mainly used for covering, protecting or hiding objects, e.g. in the form of fabric as apparel for people. Only at a second glance does one recognize that textiles can be used for many other purposes such as collecting, separating, filtering or even healing. Thus, in the first instance of this research we examined customary usages and classified them into different categories that...

2012

Textile Technology and Design: From Interior Space to Outer Space, edited by Deborah Schneiderman and Alexa Griffith Winton, 2016

2019

Textiles and architecture have long been associated; second and third skins have provided shelter and protection, since early days of men. The presence of textiles in the world of architecture spans across multiple layers, far beyond the mere usage of the fabric itself as architectural structure. The term of ‘Fabric Materiality’ is suggested to represent the unique qualities of textiles, their associated techniques and tools, assets and design paradigms; it is suggested as a design approach, to be integrated in field of architecture. The research presented in this paper explores the integration of Fabric Materiality in the field of architectural fibre-composites; it suggests an alternative design and fabrication approach in architectural FRP (fibre reinforced polymers), based on textile qualities. The main constituent of the composite material is fibres, mostly applied under the form of fabrics. All standard composite forming processes apply the fabric material over a rigid mould, t...