The deadline for the annual International Achievement Awards presented by the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI) has been extended to the end of this month—June 30, 2013. For the 2013 awards, there are thirty categories.

Since many former entrants expected the traditional IAA deadline of July 15, as it has been for years, the deadline is now extended to June 30. No further extensions will be given.

To participate:

• register at ifaipublications.com/iaasubmit.
• log in to your account.
• submit your project and registration fee.

Share your expertise with IFAI. Sign up to be an IAA judge.

Source: IFAI

Norseman Structures, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and Sweden-based Lindab, a leading ventilation and building products company in Europe, have entered into a strategic business relationship agreement for fabric covered building solutions.

The cooperative agreement paves the way for Norseman Structures to expand its presence in the European market.

Ron Bryant, president and CEO, Norseman Structures comments: “We are very excited about forming a working relationship with Lindab that will combine the strengths of our two companies to offer a new approach for innovative building solutions. Lindab is a strong, prominent building company that aligns with Norseman and our future business plans extremely well.”

This cooperation will enlarge Lindab’s product range by providing fabric building solutions from Norseman to Lindab’s customers and extensive network of builder dealers in Europe.

Source: Norseman Structures

Taiyo Kogyo Corp. and Hiraoka & Co. Ltd. recently announced the launch of a new radiation-reducing membrane material called “RaProTex™¹.” Expected applications include decontamination bags for soil and ash containing low-level radioactive substances, as tarps used to cover decontamination bags, tent structures for temporary storage of contaminated materials and as workplace dividers in areas with low-level radiation.

RaProTex, short for “Radiation Protection Textiles,” is composed of a polyester base fabric coated with radiation-shielding substances, including barium sulfate (similar to that used for protection from X-rays during abdominal exams), and vinyl chloride resin. RaProTex is more cost-efficient than conventional products that use lead and rare materials and has excellent flexibility and workability, allowing it to be compactly folded for ease of transport. It can be welded using ordinary welding machines used in membrane structures. It has a product life of approximately 10 years and is as weather-resistant as construction tents.

RaProTex is water-impermeable, making it useful for containing ash and soil contaminated with radioactive substances. The membrane also contains a rodent repellent, which is not harmful to humans, to prevent unwanted material outflow caused by rodent damage.

Three types of RaProTex are available (Types A, B and C) to meet a range of radiation shielding requirements. The highest performing membrane (2.1 mm thick and 4.5 kg/m² in weight) can block approximately 78% of X-rays and 2% of gamma rays². Further reduction of radiation is possible if multiple layers of the membrane are used.

1. Calculated based on radiation transmission rate for X-ray at tube voltage of 100kV.
2. Calculated based on radiation transmission rate for Cesium 137 radiation source (662keV).
3. The value for one sheet is calculated by dividing the measured value for 10 sheets by 10.

Source: Taiyo Kogyo Corp. and Hiraoka & Co. Ltd.

Fabric Architecture | May 2013

By Mark Zeh

Fabric materials offer quite a few advantages in the construction of roofs, such as efficiency of material use, ease of transport and good light transmissivity, but a big disadvantage is their poor thermal insulation performance. Over the last several years, many advances have been made in this area, such as the Tensotherm® material from Birdair and work on improvements in “Gray Energy” use, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

In 2010 Wagner Tragwerke, an engineering firm in Stuttgart, Germany, and the Institute for Textile and Process Engineering of Denkendorf, Germany, together with four other partners, began a project to develop thermal-energy-efficient fabric materials inspired by nature. The project, called “bear skin house,” was funded by the Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport, of the German state of Baden-Württemberg and the European Regional Development Fund.

The design team for this project based their work on the thermal energy management principles of the polar bear’s hide. Polar bears are wonderfully adapted to function in their extremely cold climates—research into polar bears reveals that it is almost invisible in an Infrared photograph, only losing heat through the area around its eyes and muzzle.

It’s a little-known fact that the skin of the polar bear is black, and its multi-layered coat is actually transparent—only appearing to be white because of its high-refractory properties. The hairs are also hollow, providing maximum insulation. The coat consists of a dense underfur layer and an outer layer of guard hairs.

Polar bears are able to harvest solar energy with their black hide, while the light-scattering properties of its hairs reflect heat back to the skin. Apparently, the fur serves to almost completely block UV wavelengths. Solar gain on their skin is partially managed by making the fur stand up at various angles—it lies flat at night, so that a maximum amount of radiated heat is reflected back to the skin. Additionally, polar bears have quite a large layer of fat under their skin and store thermal energy collected in their large bodies, which feature relatively low surface area-to-volume ratios.*

*So efficient is the heat-conservation of the polar bear’s hide that they rapidly overheat if they have to run very far. For more information see: Polar Bears International, “About Polar Bears.”

Two problems faced the “bear skin house” team in applying this principle from nature: the first was how to translate the thermal energy collection principle to a mechanism involving fabric materials. The second was how to store the thermal energy and manage its re-distribution.

Key to resolving this question was managing reflection and transmission of the various waveforms of light. ETFE film was chosen as a key layer in the resulting sandwich of membrane layers. The basis for this is its high reflectivity to infrared light (heat).

Incoming light, including near-infrared and all visible light colors, are admitted through the transparent layer. The inner black layer absorbs the thermal energy. Forced air convection carries heat away from the surface of the black layers. This energy goes into the storage media.

Some percentage of the thermal energy stored in the black layer is re-radiated as heat (middle infrared) from the black layer. This is re-reflected back through the moving air stream, back to the black layer, by the inner layer of ETFE film. Thus thermal energy is trapped and captured for transport to the storage media.

Note that there are “lofting” layers of transparent polyester fibers in this sandwich of materials. The upper layer serves to create an insulating layer of non-moving air (a sandwich of ETFE membranes separated by polyester fibers), the lower layer serves to separate the transparent heat insulation sandwich from the black membrane allowing forced air to move over the black membrane layer as a thermal-energy collection mechanism.

Harvesting and storing thermal energy turns out to be one of the biggest challenges in the design of this system. The polar bear has insulating layers of fat and a large body mass to serve this purpose. In contrast, a house is generally filled mostly with air and offers few opportunities to construct a thermal mass, which can be regulated.

“When considering how to store heat collected from the membranes, we considered two mature technologies,” explained Dr.-Ing. Thomas Stegmaier, head of technical textiles at the Institute of Textile Technology and Process Engineering. “Large masses of Zeolite or silica gel, storing energy on the basis of absorption, are safe, proven ways to store and return thermal energy. Additionally, the process of regulating them is well-proven.”

“There are several tons of silica gel held inside individual containers,” says Dr. Rosemarie Wagner, of Wagner Tragwerke. “Each container sits on its own scale and the dry mass of silica in each container is known. We are able to calculate how much thermal energy is stored in each cell by weighing how much moisture has been released by each mass of silica; the lighter the cells are the more heat is stored.”

“The thermal air system operates as a closed system in two circuits,” says Stegmaier. “The first, containing partially fresh air, runs under the floor of the house, providing the comfort of a heated floor. The second, the solar thermal circuit, is about 70% efficient in transferring sunlight into heat energy.”

The test house is planned to remain in its present location in front of the Institute of Textile Technology and Process Engineering for three years to aid long-term data-gathering, proof-of-concept, and technology transfer.

Contributing editor Mark Zeh regularly writes about technology and design from his base in Munich, Germany.

A central London office building, revamped to turn a historic single-business office into several separate spaces, now sports a modern face-lift designed to appeal to prospective customers. Architects from Sturgis Associates LLP, London, England, installed private balconies on the 33 Kingsway building with backlit, color-changing fabric ceilings. The new look updates the exterior, draws attention to the building with color and adds an outdoor amenity that urban office dwellers appreciate.

To ensure the fabric panels diffuse the light from color-changing LEDs, Fabric Architecture Ltd. tested different materials before recommending Silicone Glass Weave (SGW) fabric. The colorful light show gives the historic building a contemporary flair.

Arcus Temporum XI, a three-day spiritual exercise August, 2012, blended music, theater and art, focusing on the theme “a search for place.” The festival site, the Arch Abbey of Pannonhalma, Hungary, is a historic monument with a breathtaking view of Lake Balaton—and a boarding school gym that served as a concert hall for guest composers. Architects transformed the spacious gym into floating layers of fabric that concealed the utilitarian, enhanced the acoustics.

The system of moving, translucent polypropylene nonwoven geotextile fabric panels and a geometric grid of point lights conceal the gym’s beams and walls. “The hanging ribs [acted] by damping the sharp reflecting sounds and dispersing them through space,” according to the architects, Dániel Baló, Dániel Eke, István Varga and Zoltán Kalászi, students at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design.

Fabric Architecture | May 2013

By Josep I. de Llorens

The Fifth Latin American Symposium of Tensile Structures (Tens-Scl 2012), was held in September 2012 in Santiago, Chile. Organized by the School of Architecture, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and chaired by architect Juan I. Baixas, Tens-Scl 2012 presented six main lectures and 24 presentations over three days. The Tens-Scl series of symposia began in São Paulo, Brazil in 2002, and was followed by symposiums in Caracas, Venezuela (2005); Mexico City, Mexico (2008); and Montevideo, Uruguay (2011) (see FA Jul/Aug 2011.)

The presentations and lectures were seen by 161 participants from 18 countries and four continents and included topics as diverse as recent projects, basic concepts, new applications and materials, design, software, testing, installation and education.

Uruguayan architect Roberto Santomauro opened the event with his lecture, “The Fifth Material,” which referred to membranes as part of the pantheon of available architectural materials after concrete, wood, metal and glass.

New York architect Nicholas Goldsmith attempted to define what a pavilion is in his talk “The butterfly and its skin,” using a set of carefully chosen examples ranging from exhibition pavilions and music venues, to add-on enclosures such as access halls and stalls. Goldsmith’s message: skins in buildings do not perform as well as human skin but their capabilities for multifunctional enclosures are improving.

In “Taut structures,” Brazilian architect and associate professor at the University of São Paulo, Ruy M. Pauletti showed how tensile structures work. Paradoxically, their characteristics configure the possible form, whereas rigid structures (steel or concrete) provide much more freedom.

Buro Happold’s Fergus McCormick presented the environmentally friendly 2012 London Olympic Stadium (designed by the London office of Populous with Buro Happold). He astonished the audience with the accuracy of the positioning of the last compression ring segment that achieved a tolerance of a few millimeters for a structure the size of 340m by 260m.

Carlos Hernández of Experimental Construction Institute (UCV), Caracas, showed the design of a testing apparatus and procedure for measuring the influence of humidity, temperature and wind on the pre-tension of hypars.

For my own lecture, I presented aspects of the installation of tensile structures that must be considered in a design if feasibility and affordability are to be achieved.

Lectures were presented in the mornings, workshops in the afternoon sessions, including two dedicated to introducing the software programs ixForten 4000 and Easy, used for designing tensile surface structures. In a hall adjacent to the lecture auditorium, exhibitors Chukoh Chemical Industries, Cidelsa, Serge Ferrari, Naizil SpA, Sobresaliente, Synthesis Advanced Polymers Fabrics and Verseidag were on hand. In addition, entries to a student competition (open to architecture and engineering students) were on display. Student projects were to make use of textiles, cable or tensegrity structures. The jury awarded top prize to A. Montes for their “Tensile structure for emergency evacuation systems,” an original idea whose seductive presentation did not disguise the need for further technical development.

The event consolidated the trend that began with Tens-Scl’s 2011 symposium marking the maturity and development of tensile structures in Latin America. Particularly notable was the incipient adaptation of designs and technology to environmental, cultural, material and social contexts. In conclusion, the VI Symposium was announced that would take place from Sept. 8–12, 2014, in São Paulo.

Josep I. de Llorens is professor of architecture and director of the School of Architecture, Polytechnic University of Catalua, Barcelona.

Fabric Architecture | May 2013

By Frank Edgerton Martin

With digital fabrication, the fabric industry has a powerful tool to combine international expertise with on-the-ground knowledge of local building conditions and client needs. Thanks to computer-aided design software and the Internet, clients, designers, fabricators and manufacturers can work together across time zones and long distances. The combination of digital design and digitally-controlled fabrication is leading to creative and unexpected production that is redefining the industry and blurring traditional boundaries of the trades.

In almost all projects, digital fabricators can work with local architects familiar with local codes and the client’s needs. As Murray Higgs, CEO of Auckland-based Structurflex, explains, “architects provide their concept design, the function and location of the projects…and [details about] the particular translucency required.”

From this base of information, fabricators can identify the type of fabric required and potential suppliers. “In the U.S. market, we typically specify the product for the architect and owner,” says Bart Dreiling, head of Structurflex’s North American office, Kansas City, Mo. “[In] other markets, the architect is often responsible for specifying the makeup, type and raw material manufacturer.”

Structurflex is in constant contact with fabric suppliers and manufacturers who “regularly keep us up to date on new products and their marketing priorities,” Higgs says. He goes on to praise fabric manufacturers for their promotion of fabric architecture and helping to grow the total market.

A precision process

For many projects, such as those illustrated here in the U.S. and New Zealand, Structurflex uses its expertise in digital design and fabrication, taking advantage of the technology available to the industry. The company tailors CAD software to meet manufacturing and design needs specific to fabric structures. This technology, along with its ability to collaborate with owners and architects through all stages, are two of the company’s greatest competitive advantages.

Once Structurflex has clear programmatic and concept direction, its in-house designers in Kansas City and Auckland engineer and pattern the building elements. Structurflex New Zealand cuts and fabricates the membranes for container shipment to the final destination.

Dreiling observes that, “we often interface with systems being designed and fabricated by others, in which case a high degree of coordination is required. Once the analysis is completed and an engineering report is developed then approved or reviewed by the architect of record and engineer of record, we commence detailed fabrication drawings.”

At this stage, Stucturflex develops a set of two-dimensional cutting patterns from the three-dimensional model in its specialty software. “The material is also tested and analyzed before this process,” Dreiling says, “in order to adjust the flat pattern for the amount of stretch or compensation the material will experience during installation tensioning.”

The fabric patterns are then refined with “add ons” for seaming, special cutting at corners and penetration locations. This is done in AutoCAD then converted to a DXF file, which is readable by an electronic cutting and plotting machine that works on a CNC (computer numerical control). This process allows for a very high degree of accuracy in matching the final product with the original modeling and analysis.

“There is a tight level of tolerance in our fabrication,” says Dreiling, “however problems can arise from less stringent tolerances and detailing in other components such as structural [elements] which may be by others, foundations, connection points on existing buildings, etc.”

Working around the world

Companies working in many countries must adapt to varying levels of trade protectionism. Recently, Structurflex began a joint venture in São Paulo, Brazil. “While we are able to cost-efficiently and safely ship a fabricated structure from New Zealand to the United States,” Dreiling says, “we do not enjoy the same option for Brazil.”

In response to that country’s high taxes and duties on imports, Structurflex established a joint venture with São Paulo-based Nautika Ltda.—a company with membrane fabrication abilities and experience. This locally-based manufacturing capacity should help the partnership to succeed in Brazil’s rapidly growing economy.

By adapting to local regulations and climates, and continuously building in-house design expertise, local fabricators are now able travel the world.

Contributing editor Frank Edgerton Martin’s profile on design firm SO-IL’s white-on-white interior for a New York production firm appeared in the Jan/Feb issue.

Fabric Architecture | May 2013

By Marc Swackhamer

In November 2012 the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) at the University of Stuttgart, led by Professors Achim Menges and Jan Knippers, completed the fabrication and installation of a unique fiber-woven pavilion.

Strikingly beautiful from a distance, the pavilion’s true innovation comes into focus through examination of its digitally woven skin. The pavilion stands at about 3.5m tall and 8m in diameter, yet it weighs less than 320kg and measures just 4mm thick. It is the product of ongoing research collaboration between architects, engineers, biologists and students. As a precedent, the team examined lobster exoskeletons, specifically focusing on material differentiation along the cross-section of the organism’s shell. Variation in stresses placed on the shell cause its microscopic fibers to migrate from parallel to perpendicular orientation. In the pavilion, similar changes in fiber orientation efficiently accommodate the flow of forces through the structure. The resulting pattern of layered strands in the shell forms a visual map of those forces flowing through its surface.

The research team relied on a six-axis robotic arm to accurately weave the resin-saturated carbon and glass fibers together. A temporary steel frame formed an armature across which fibers were stretched while being woven. To protect it from the weather, the frame sat on a rotating platform in a provisional structure near the site of the pavilion. As the frame rotated slowly on its turntable, the robotic arm went to work laying down more than 30km of fiber. Successive layers of fiber strands are clearly visible in the resulting translucent material assembly. Once the fabrication of the pavilion was completed, its steel frame was removed and it was carried to its final resting place not with heavy cranes or lifts, but with a small group of students each supporting one of its legs.

The ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion’s diaphanous skin belies its remarkable strength, harkening to the shockingly thin shell structures of Spanish architect Felix Candela. The project successfully merges unique modes of computation and material design with robotic fabrication and biomimetics to present new ways of considering lightweight, materially efficient architectural structures. Additionally, it offers new, innovative ways of considering the use of fibrous, woven material in building construction.

Marc Swackhamer is an associate professor and director of the Master of Architecture Program at the School of Architecture, University of Minnesota. He is also a founding partner of HouMinn Practice, an interdisciplinary design collaborative started with partner Blair Satterfield.

Fabric Architecture | May 2013

By Nicholas Goldsmith

Besides the developments described in Part 1, another critical path in the development of tensile fabric interiors also started during the 1980s. Bill Moss, well known since the 50s for his design of lightweight camping tents, introduced a stretch fabric display for trade shows and events. He started with the Moss indoor dome in 1988 as his trade booth for the Outdoor Retailer tradeshow in Salt Lake City, Utah, and introduced new designs for trade show structures from 1989–93. Interest from the trade for collapsible shelters at tradeshows, inspired by open air market canopies, led to a standard line of 12 products and graphic signage. After 11 years as a brand, Moss Inc. developed into a sculptural branding company and continues today.

Moss’ assistants and collaborators at the time were the artists Cindy Thompson and Charles Duvall. Cindy eventually left to start her own firm called Transformit Inc., known worldwide for designing, fabricating and installing stretch interior spaces, event structures and sculptures such as the Head First! Theater in Cleveland, Ohio.

Charles Duvall also started his own firm, Duvall Design Inc., that designs, fabricates and installs interior and mesh outdoor structures. Some of the work includes shade elements and trade show interiors and even children’s amusements.

Through Bill Moss and these companies, a new industry for interior fabric environments was created in the U.S. Other firms not mentioned above, such as Eventscape Inc. and Pink Inc., joined this industry to make it a multimillion dollar industry.

An example of Eventscape’s work is a 468m², six-ringed feature at the Mall of America that is sloped to match the curvature of the ceiling. The printable block-out textile is an ideal solution for this project because the rings appear solid, providing an even glow with a subtle gradient in the printed colors. The placement of the textile seams was specified by the designer.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the firm Architen began in England in the 1990s to develop soft interior spaces under the eye of Alex Heslop. When Architen merged with Landrell in 2001 to become Architen Landrell, it continued to develop interior environments including many well-known interior spaces in Europe, such as the dining area in the renovated British Museum in London and the four quirky seminar pod spaces for the Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, Queen Mary, University of London, within an atrium court in Whitehall, London. The University of London spaces range from a delicate, fabric-wrapped oval spacecraft to one that looks like a spiky deep-sea creature dressed in black oil skin. The pods provide a series of meeting rooms for the university staff and students.

Frei Otto, the 20th-century founder of the exterior tensile structure, developed his early designs in the 1960s with the circus tent manufacturer Peter Stromeyer of Konstanz, Germany.* Stromeyer saw in Otto a new approach to tent design and developed many of the revolutionary early tensile structures of the 60s for several German National Garden Shows.¹ Stromeyer’s daughter, Gisela Stromeyer, worked for this author in New York in the 90s. When she left FTL, she opened her own studio to design and build soft interior spaces in both Germany and the U.S. Her work includes spaces such as the showroom in New York City, N.Y., for the American fashion designer Tahari and the Icognito Club in Zurich, Switzerland. Gisela’s design approach uses a point support system, rather than a perimeter framework, which gives the spaces a light scalloped quality.

* See FA Jul/Aug 2012, “Zusammenarbeit: Frei Otto + Peter Stromeyer”

It was not until the late 90s that interior architects and designers accepted this fabric technology for stores and indoor commercial use. The latest development in the acceptance of fabrics in interiors is in the hotel and hospitality industry where restaurants, clubs and hotels use stretch interior elements as just another construction element. Today more than 10 firms specialize in interior environments, from simple planar elements to extremely shaped volumetric spaces.

Recently, fabric art elements used to create 3-D forms have become so large that they change the definition of interior spaces. The most impressive type of installation is by the British artist Anish Kapoor. His “Marsyas” sculpture, constructed at the Tate Modern art museum’s Turbine Hall in 2003, consists of three welded steel rings 150m apart between which is suspended a taut PVC-coated membrane custom dyed blood red. The woven polyester PVC fabric was custom patterned to take the unusual shape. The structure fills the entire hall (3,500m of fabric and 40 tons of steel), necks down and then opens up into a vertical space at the bridge element in the middle that spans the space. Anish Kapoor states that he doesn’t “wish to make sculpture about form…I wish to make sculpture about belief, or about passion, about experience that is outside of material concern.” ²

This large red sculpture creates an almost negative bridge focusing on spaces at the ends and middle, seemingly sucking them together—a truly remarkable piece.

Fabrics

A multitude of fabrics is available for interiors. Stretch fabric is used whenever possible because it eliminates the need for perfectly patterned shapes and provides wrinklefree surfaces. Stretch fabrics today are generally knitted polyester or nylon fibers. The first stretch fabric was manufactured by DuPont in 1959. Spandex, as it is called in North America or elastane in Europe, is classified as an elastomeric fiber. An elastomer is a natural or synthetic polymer that, at room temperature, can be stretched and expanded to more than twice its original length. After removal of the tensile load it will immediately return to its original length. Along with spandex, rubber and anidex (no longer produced in the U.S.) are considered elastomeric fibers. The famous brand name known for spandex is Lycra® (originally produced by DuPont), also sometimes used as a generic name. Often spandex is mixed with nylon or cottons and can be knitted to make a four-way stretch instead of a two-way stretch.

Most fabric can be flameproofed, but the best are the inherent flame retardant fabrics such as Trapeze®, which is 90% polyester and 10% spandex. There are seven different Trapeze fabrics including a water repellent one and a new Eco-Trapeze® fabric made from recycled postindustrial waste and postconsumer plastic bottles. It has a slight off-white look, unlike the bright white color of virgin polyester. In addition, there are stretch net fabrics, some with honeycombs and some designed specifically for projection surfaces. ³

Generally, interior fabrics need to be taken down and cleaned over time and unless the fabric is inherently flameproof, the flameproofing wears off with each cleaning. Today, fabricators use zippers at seams so sections of the fabric can be taken apart in pieces, cleaned and reinstalled without major effort. Often the clients are provided with two sets of fabric elements so they can rotate out the fabric elements without any downtime to the installation.

Design process

The design process is different for each designer, but in general, unlike large scale outdoor structures where one goes from a small physical model to a computer finite element formfinding program and then to computer patterning, interior fabric designers often work on a smaller scale and are able to construct mockups or first article demonstrations of their design at their facility. For this reason there is a strong craft quality to the design and implementation which is non-existent in large-scale exterior structures. Most interior design tensile structures are designed and fabricated at the same place, so there isn’t a separation between designer, engineer and installer as there is with outdoor structures. As a result, most designers of interior environments are first trained as designers and artists and then enter the industry, realizing a need for control over the manufacturing process.

At FTL Design Engineering Studio, the approach to the design process starts with sketch concepts, which are developed into small physical models. If the project calls for stretch material, the physical model goes to the fabricator to develop a prototype. If the project uses a nonstretch woven, the cutting patterns are created on the computer. The design process changes both as the scale of the project develops and as the material type changes.

Conclusion

In the 40 years of its existence, interior fabric structures have moved out of the realm of art installations into a mainstream commercial business model. Interior designers have accepted this technology as a unique way to create soft transparent and translucent organic spaces that would not be possible using other materials. These membrane structures will soon be seen as another type of fabric element for the interior designer just as drapes and curtains are today. The tensile fabric interior will become as familiar as the four-posted, tented bed of the past, only its language will signify something modernist and futurist, rather than historical and traditional.

Nicholas Goldsmith, FAIA, LEED AP, is senior design principal of FTL Design Engineering Studio, New York, N.Y.

Notes

1. The Bundesgartenschaus in 1957–58.

2. Anish Kapoor, Marsyas, Tate Publishing, 2003. Pages 12–17.

3. Dazian’s fabric selections and specifications can be reviewed at www.dazian.com.

Fabric Architecture | May 2013

The John J. Duncan Jr. Knoxville Station Transit Center, located in downtown Knoxville, Tenn., serves as the city’s major transportation hub to more than 3.5 million passengers a year. Built over James White Parkway on an overpass, the Station serves as a link between the central core of the city and the eastern civic fringe.

Designed by McCarty Hosaple McCarty in a joint venture with Bullock Smith & Partners, the Knoxville Station Transit Center’s simple modern architectural language and materials aesthetically bridge the historical form of an adjacent church and nearby mid-20th Century modernist civic buildings.

Home to 80 city buses, numerous para-transit vehicles and downtown trolleys for the city, the center also serves the greater Knoxville metropolitan area. The main station includes 20 bus bays at a central protected platform, a trolley stop at the front door and transit rider amenities such as bathrooms, a service counter and vending machines. To adequately shade passengers, three structures were created for three areas: the main bus station, the waiting area and the trolley stop, each with a unique structural concept incorporating tensioned fabric.

Foundations for the tensile structures are integral with the overpass bridge that the project sits on. Span Systems Inc. fabricated the shade structures to incorporate the movements of the bridge as well as final reaction load limits that had to stay within the limitations of the existing foundations. PTFE fabric was the fabric of choice; galvanized A603 cables and high performance, 3-part epoxy paint were used on all three structures.

The project received a LEED Silver rating from the U.S. Green Building Council for sustainable design in new construction.

Fabric Architecture | May 2013

The Mall at Chestnut Hill, located in the Chestnut Hill section of Newton, Mass., caters to affluent Bostonians living in the suburbs. The high-end, two-story enclosed mall is small by most retail mall standards but attracts shoppers with tony boutique retailers such as Kate Spade, Cole Haan, Coach, Brooks Brothers and Bloomingdales, the only “anchor.” Managed by Simon Property Group, the Mall at Chestnut Hill was designed in the 1970s but recently underwent updating and can hold its own with much bigger retail centers.

The interior plan is a straight ‘dumbbell’ configuration of a spine lined by shops and capped at each end by a major department store, in this case two Bloomingdales stores—the Women’s Store at one end, and the Men’s and Home Store at the other. The upper level of the spine is ringed with a dramatic, diagonal grid latticework of clerestory windows that, on a sunny day, flood the central space with bright, almost overwhelming light. For this reason, management called upon ViewPoint Sign and Awning, Northborough, Mass., to install shade elements to mitigate the glare.

ViewPoint fabricated 252 custom sunshade banners that were cut, hemmed and stitched to size and fitted to the diagonal grid metal framing system of the clerestories. Each panel banner had stitched and hemmed pole pockets at both ends. The shade system was installed approximately 40 feet up from the ground floor by lift during off hours to avoid interrupting businesses.

Fabric Architecture | May 2013

By Mason Riddle

GuildWorks: Architecture of the Air, a team of creative types based out of Portland, Ore., makes their client’s life easier by designing all manner of fabric installations for spaces and events, large or small, temporary or permanent.

One project of note is GuildWorks’ fabric installation for the Electric Forest Festival held annually in Rothbury, Mich. Launched in 2008 as the Rothbury Music Festival, the event changed its name in 2011. A four-day event, it features a variety of music genres in a wooded setting northwest of Grand Rapids and not far inland from Lake Michigan. Each year, GuildWorks was charged to create easily navigable connecting spaces through the woods so attendees could find their way from one stage to the next.

“Through our fabric installations and the addition of awesome lights that give the forest an electric feel, we essentially helped transform the festival experience into one beyond that of any other current festival in America,” says the GuildWorks website.

A complex dynamic and theatrical installation, Electric Forest is comprised of vividly colored and dynamically shaped fabric forms anchored to trees and posts that swoop low and rise high through the forest. For the 2012 Electric Forest installation, GuildWorks custom-dyed woven polyester in multiple colors including vermillion red, deep purple and vibrant gold—approximately 595m of the material.

According to GuildWorks founder, Mar Ricketts, the biggest challenge each year is the timeframe. “The whole thing has to go in quick. We arrive less than one week in advance of the event. Another challenge is making complex designs of many panels linked together in our production shop, pack them up and ship them out then unfold them on site into the correct shapes.”

GuildWorks also has worked their creative magic for corporate showrooms and conferences, theater productions, weddings and even backyards. Work includes projects in Oregon, Toronto, Las Vegas, Arizona and Saint Paul, among others.

Contributing editor Mason Riddle regularly writes about art and design for national journals.

Interdisciplinary design firm, KVA Matx, recently teamed with Hamburg architects, 360+ Architekten, to develop their winning competition project for adaptable living/working row housing. Called the Soft House, the project offers a new paradigm for carbon neutral construction and ecologically responsive living. A working prototype debuted recently at the International Building Exhibition in Hamburg, where the design featured an innovative solid softwood structure that sequesters carbon and has a movable, textile infrastructure. The exterior of the Soft House is an interactive, flexible façade that harvests energy. Inside, smart curtains can be moved to reconfigure spaces and create personal micro-climates as the user desires.

Fabric Architecture reported on the flexible interior solid-state lighting curtains used in the Soft House in a past issue of the magazine, in the May/June 2008 article, a concept first developed by Kennedy & Violich Architecture Ltd in 2006.

–BNW

Polyfab USA’s 2013 Tension Shade Workshops are set for this spring, starting Feb. 22 at Trivantage™ in Lithia Spring, Ga.

At each workshop, attendees will break into small groups and visit four different stations with each station covering a different topic.

• Station one: Site survey and measuring— Traditional and “state of the art” measuring will be discussed.
• Station two: CAD & Design— A number of computer workstations will be set up with Shade Designer software so attendees can design their own shade sail.
• Station three: Cutting, sewing & manufacturing techniques— There will be a sewing machine set up for a demonstration and supervision of various techniques.
• Station four: Installation & tensioning procedures— Attendees will have the chance to install the shade sail on-site.

The workshop schedule is as follows:

• Date: Friday, Feb. 22
  Place: Trivantage, 422 Thornton Road, Suite 109-110, Lithia Springs, GA 30122
  RSVP: mgravitis@trivantage or your local Trivantage account representative.
• Date: Friday, March 1
  Place: Holiday Inn Rolling Meadows Schaumburg, 3405 Algonquin Road, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008
  RSVP: lschuler@trivantage.com or your local Trivantage account representative.
• Date: Friday, March 15
  Place: Intercontinental at Doral (Miami), 2505 Northwest 87th Avenue, Doral, FL 33172
  RSVP: fviera@trivantage.com or your local Trivantage account representative.

Polyfab USA is also planning a smaller hands-on workshop in conjunction with the Western Canvas Products Association Annual Expo:

• Date: April 1-3, 2013
  Place: The Hyatt Regency Long Beach, 200 South Pine Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90802
  Register: Visit Western Canvas Products Association online.

In addition, Polyfab USA will also be exhibiting at the following seminars:

• Date: Saturday, March 2
  Place: Trivantage, 16 Worlds Fair Drive, Somerset, NJ 08873
  Register: Your local Trivantage account representative.
• Date: Friday, March 8
  Place: Hilton Garden Inn, 2190 East Lamar Blvd., Arlington, TX 76006
  Register: Your local Trivantage account representative.

Source: Polyfab USA

As reported in the New York Times business section on Jan. 23, the London Olympic authorities are having trouble finding uses for many of last summer’s Olympic Games venues as promised, most notably the main Olympic Stadium. Fabric Architecture reported on many of the temporary venues in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue, and like everyone, we were led to believe that the Olympic Delivery Authority had all the post-game logistics worked out for repurposing, relocating or recycling all the venues and support facilities that were not designated permanent or originally destined for specific use after the games. Now, according to the Times, this process is apparently bogged down in negotiations or legal issues and the structures’ futures are uncertain.

—BNW

Fabric Architecture | January 2013

Now that the dust has settled on the London Olympics, the story can be told about how ordinary people were able to walk up the fabric roof of the O2 Dome (formerly Millennium Dome), and survive the winds and weather to walk down the other side on a custom fabric walkway.

Designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners with Buro Happold—the same team that designed the original dome—the roof walk, called “Up at the O2,” is a combination of architecture, engineering and extreme visitor experience. The climbing facility starts on the south side of the O2 where a staircase with glass enclosed elevator brings people up 7.5m to a staging platform and the beginning of a tensioned fabric walkway that is suspended above the dome roof. Climbers ascend the 30° incline curving roof with a lanyard cable and handrail the entire walkway. Climbers are issued a climb suit and harness that they attach to the cable that guides them as they move toward the top, 50m above ground, where a 12m diameter viewing platform (with spectacular 360° views of London) awaits them. A return walkway leads climbers back down to ground level on the north side.

Considering that none of the walkway and access structures were allowed to touch or compromise the structural integrity of the original dome, it becomes obvious that design, engineering and fabrication magic was performed here. Up at the O2 is a partnership between AEG and O2. Appointed to oversee construction and deliver the project in time for the 2012 Summer Olympics was main contractor ISG. ISG hired Base Structures Ltd. to design the connections, and fabricate and install the cable tensioned walkway and central viewing platform at the dome’s apex.

The technical challenges the project presented were considerable. “The first problem to overcome,” says Mark Smith, director and head of projects with Base Structures, “was to ensure it was actually physically possible to walk up the fabric surface [of the dome].” With the steep, 30° slopes of the dome, Base’s testing of various fabric surfaces proved that a custom material was needed for the design concept to succeed. From a construction standpoint, there was the additional problem that no existing crane could reach far enough to fully access the work site. Base Structures solved many of the problems by breaking the project down into manageable bits and with lots of prototype testing in the shop. Proven methods were applied to sections of the walkway, preassembled in the shop, then transported to the site and fastened into place, a strategy that worked well given England’s notorious weather. With April 2012 on record as the wettest ever, Base was forced to do most of the installation work on weekends to meet its deadline.

Fabric manufacturer Mehler Texnologies contributed to the project by creating a custom PVC fabric with a non-standard textured surface to increase traction. After much testing, a modified design emerged that incorporated thick ribbing applied across the width of the walkway fabric for the entire length of the walk. The ribbing acts like pliable ridges that offer climbers additional grip between shoe treads and inclined walkway.

The ultimate solution to the numerous challenges is a successful combination of cable suspension fabric bridges that hang from the massive yellow truss masts that hold up the dome.

Austin, Texas-based Miró Rivera Architects have designed a new race course at the Circuit of the Americas, the first purpose-built Formula 1 Grand Prix™ facility in the U.S. The new facilities debuted mid-November by hosting the 2012 Formula 1 United States Grand Prix. The architects’ innovative design includes a modular “kit of parts” that can be added onto. Besides designing a 6,500 seat tower amphitheater, and a grand plaza, observation tower, ticketing buildings and concession areas, Miró Rivera designed a main grandstand with fabric-clad canopies.

The grandstand and concessions buildings were conceived as a modular system of components that can be arranged according to need, providing a flexibility that allows the site to grow over time.

At the annual IFAI Expo—this year held in Boston, 7–9 Nov—the awning fabrics maker Glen Raven Custom Fabrics, introduced the industry’s first awning and shade fabrics featuring recycled fiber. Sunbrella® Renaissance Unity fabrics contain 50% post-industrial recycled Sunbrella fiber, resulting in a vintage canvas look that retains fade resistance and sun protection qualities.

Unity fabrics are GREENGUARD Children and Schools certified as contributing to quality indoor air. “This feature of Unity,” says Vince Hankins, industrial business manager for Glen Raven Custom Fabrics, “makes them attractive for use inside sun-lit atriums and solariums that are popular for resorts, offices and retail settings.”

Graduate students Felecia Davis and Delia Dumitrescu recently presented their research on interactive, knitted tension structures that respond to heat or electrical current. Using a tubular knitting machine, with electronic circuits running throughout the fabrics tested, Davis (a PhD candidate at MIT) and Dumitrescu (PhD candidate at The Swedish School of Textiles, Bors), tested and created four tubular fabric structures that change surface appearance when stimulated in response to current or heat. One prototype opens up regular “pores” when heated to high temperature; another changes opacity depending on an electrical current. Davis and Dumitrescu presented their papers in early November at the IFAI Expo 2012 in Boston, and an exhibition of their research prototypes, “Patterning by heat: Responsive textile structures,” was on view in the Keller Gallery at MIT Architecture from 5–14 Nov.

Fabric Architecture | January 2013

By Mark Zeh

In June 2012, the Al-Bahar Towers, designed by the international architecture firm, Aedas of London, England, opened in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. These twin towers are located on a gateway site on the Eastern Ring Road, between Abu Dhabi and its international airport. The towers are the new headquarters for the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, providing working space for more than 2,000 employees.

A standout among its many interesting architectural features is its dynamic adaptive sunshade façade, potentially the largest adaptive architectural structure in the world if not the most-complex. The sunshades are composed of approximately 1,050 triangular fabric panels per tower. These are arranged in a tessellated hexagonal pattern on 2m standoffs around the sun-exposed portions of the glass façades of the buildings. Each of the hexagonal clusters acts as a single unit, controlled by an individual actuator, which allows the unit to be opened or closed in response to solar loading.

“The project brief was quite prescriptive,” says Peter Oborn, deputy chairman of Aedas. ”The client’s brief called for two 25-story towers on two adjacent sites, the use of modern materials, something which referred to the architectural heritage of the region, and an outstanding landmark building.”

The inspiration for the hexagonal pattern comes from the mashrabiya, a type of sunshade grille pattern found in Islamic vernacular architecture. The design team combined a basic origami pattern with the mashrabiya pattern to create this innovative sunshade concept. The result is a 50% reduction in solar gain on the glass façade and a 20% reduction in the amount of electricity that would be required to cool the building without the sunshade.

A key to successfully executing the sunshade concept was selection of an appropriate material for the triangular elements. Aedas collaborated closely with engineers and material specialists from the project engineering firm, Arup of London, England, to select the fabric.

“We looked at a range of materials including ETFE, polycarbonate, FRP [fiber reinforced plastic], a metal mesh, glass honeycomb sandwich and architectural fabric. There were a number of drivers and key characteristics, including light transmission, density, mechanical properties, UV light resistance, maintenance and obviously cost,” explains Konrad Xuereb, lead structural engineer for the project, from Arup of London. “Architectural fabric seemed to best fit most of the parameters, so we then looked more-closely at PVC/polyester and PTFE/glass fiber mesh fabrics, with the result that the PTFE/glass fiber mesh material was deemed the most-appropriate.”

“One of our goals was to preserve authentic views from the interior, even when the shades were closed,” says Oborn. “The fabric we’d selected [from Chukoh Chemical Industries Ltd, of Tokyo, Japan] is around 30 to 35% light transmissive, which, from our perspective in northern Europe, wouldn’t seem to offer much in the way of transparency. However, when you experience it in the strong sunlight of the desert in Abu Dhabi, particularly from a distance of 2m, it is like looking through a light net curtain: You don’t have a sense of being obstructed.”

Another key partner in final design, detailing, testing and construction of the mashrabiya structure was Yuanda China Holdings Ltd of Shenyang, China. Its engineering team at Yuanda Europe built an entire material evaluation and accelerated performance testing facility for the project in Basel, Switzerland.

Creating large structures with so many individual dynamic external components in a coastal desert environment presented the design team with serious challenges to resolve.

“The biggest challenge in building these structures, in my opinion, was to create a sympathetic structural solution to support the mashrabiya (which cantilever from the glass façade), without building something that is too cumbersome or visually intrusive,” says Xuereb. “Another key challenge was to conceive a solution that neatly resolved how adjacent triangles meet at the nodes to allow the releases required for the unitized panels to open or close. Each triangular panel has different end constraints to the ones adjacent to it.”

“The stubs that connected the cantilever arms supporting the nodes to the structure weren’t complicated assemblies, but they were critical assemblies,” adds Oborn. ”They had to be designed in a way that they could take up any dimensional tolerance.”

The Al-Bahar Towers project has won multiple awards for its innovative dynamic sunshade and certainly serves as inspiration for how buildings can be designed in a more sustainable fashion.

“I would hope that this building doesn’t so much provoke conversation around dynamic façades, but rather around the design of curtain wall buildings,” says Oborn. “The issue is really more that we can’t keep designing the way that we used to because it’s just too energy-inefficient.”

Contributing editor Mark Zeh regularly writes about technology and design from his base in Munich, Germany.

Fabric Architecture | January 2013

By Nicholas Goldsmith

Unlike exterior fabric structures, such as tensile architecture and textile facades, interior fabric environments are able to use a greater diversity of materials because they aren’t required to withstand the structural criteria of wind and snow loading on their surfaces. As a result, more than 20 different fabrics can be used in interior applications, and they generally employ some form of stretch knitted material to minimize wrinkling. However, fabric interiors can also be made out of standard woven fabrics and can use an infinite number of different materials, from silks to cottons, rayons to polyesters and even woven Teflon® fibers. In this two-part series, I will examine the origins, pioneers and future potentials of textile-based interiors.

With the advent of the be-ins and happenings in the 1960s, there was a departure from hard-edged architecture of the 1950s to more organic and softer forms inspired by nature, LSD and alternative spatial solutions. The rage in the mid ’60s was to create soft, pneumatic environments as shown in the work of Haus Rucker, Jean Aubert and Jean-Paul Jungmann (fig. 1) and EAT’s inflatable interior of the Pepsi Pavilion at Osaka in 1970.²

Along with these nonporous pneumatic skins, softer more porous fabrics began to be used as interior partitions. Some of the first documented interior environments using this material were conceived and built by the Lithuanian-born American artist Aleksandra Kasuba in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Her “live-in environment” of 1971 beautifully shows the use of a double stretch nylon knit fabric that has both translucency and a degree of transparency. Using a ribbed underwear fabric called “two way stretch,” Kasuba was able to pattern the material to form three-dimensional warped spaces. She continued to design and build custom interior art spaces through the 70s and into the 80s. Her 20th Century Environment at the Carborundum Museum in Niagara Falls, N.Y. (fig. 2) in 1971 is a perfect example of multilayered complex spaces where wall, column and ceiling join into one sensuous enclosure, breaking down the traditional concept of building section and creating a fluid whole environment.

I met Kasuba in 1972 at Whiz Bang Quick City in Woodstock, N.Y., an event organized by Works, a group of architects, designers and educators, to bring people together who were interested in avant-garde design and architecture. Each invited group or individual was to build a dwelling in 24 hours and live in it for the duration of the event. I was a student at Cornell University at the time, and with my classmate and future business partner, Todd Dalland, we set up one of our first tensile structures made out of glued polyethylene film that we patterned and stretched into curve shapes. Across from us, a wild-looking, stretched cocoonlike structure emerged and, as curious students would do, we went to find out who designed this building. Aleksandra Kasuba, who at the time taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York, set up this stretch fabric structure with her students and the 14 of them lived in the structure during the event. Although they tried to waterproof the structure with rubber compound, the water collected in spots and this clearly showed some of the limitations of this stretch fabric material in outdoor applications.

As I became friends and a colleague with Kasuba, I worked with her on a few occasions, including a three-floor interior installation in Paris for the Saudi Arabian Air Force in 1980, which was designed, built and installed in 60 days. Here I had a chance to watch her develop her modeling and formfinding approach. She followed signs of nature using an intuitive and spontaneous process that she applied to a series of physical models, allowing the shape to just “happen.” I was always struck by Kasuba’s description of how she saw the surface tensions as a liquid force that moved over the structure, much like water in a streambed. This description simulated the FTL finite element engineering approach to a T; instead of “water” we used element nets with digital strain gauges to create minimal surfaces. We eliminated wrinkling by having equal tensions in both directions.

In the 80s at FTL, we did many interior installations using all sorts of fabrics and generally worked with nonstretch materials, developing intricate computer cutting patterns and geometries. We designed the interior environments for a multitude of events including an interior of the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York for Maurice Biedermann, a Moroccan who wanted to celebrate a “Midnight at the Oasis,” and a performance structure for a new Winter Garden at the World Financial Center.

These installations used many different fabrics including cotton muslin, velour opera drape material, stretch fabrics and even some outdoor materials such as PVC-coated polyester for reflective acoustic situations geared to music.

Besides special events, we (FTL) were interested in using tensile fabrics for office applications and in utilizing the lighting effect called “volumetric light” (an effect that is the equivalent of looking at the sun hidden behind a cloud: what is seen is illumination, but no light source). We used the effect in the design of Donna Karan’s first showroom in New York opposite. Based on this project, in 1985 we were commissioned by the Sunar Hauserman furniture manufacturer to develop our concept of a system of lighting that would eliminate office task lighting, replacing it with a diffuse luminous environment. We did a study with the lighting designer, Peter Barna, and found that we could eliminate the “veilant reflections” that create glare in the workplace and instead use lower light levels than the normal foot-candle levels recommended by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. This gave a warm luminous space, minimizing eye strain. We used a calendared nylon fabric with PL fluorescent lights that had just been introduced to the market. As Barna says, “Looking at the human reaction to the natural world, one tends to see surfaces in three ways: the surface mode, which is where you actually see the surface; the volume mode, where it is like water…you see into it; and the film mode, which is like looking into sky. In an office 90% of what one sees is surface mode. And this gives a feeling of enclosure that is possibly too strong.”

With the luminous panels we designed for Sunar Hauserman or any other backlit tensile system, the surface dissolves and one sees light as volume or sky. With less bright light, pupils dilate and a person can see more: if the glare is reduced, vision improves.

This system was called “Tensilight” and was prototyped and showcased in showrooms and magazines but never went into production.³ However, more than 10 years later, systems using fabric elements were seen in some office furniture systems by Haworth, Herman Miller or Knoll. The most developed ones include Knoll’s A3 Furniture System in 2002 by Hani Rashid and Lise Ann Couture of Asymptote, which was a workstation based on the interior design of airplanes. The outer shell is a translucent double stretch nylon fabric tensioned on an aluminum frame. Another system was designed in 1999 by Ayse Birsel for Herman Miller, called the Resolve system, that includes smaller fabric wing elements and panels. Both systems are on the market today but treat the lighted fabric panels more as reflective surfaces than luminous ones.

Part 2 and conclusion of Interior Textiles will appear in the May/June issue.

Nicholas Goldsmith, FAIA, LEED AP, is senior design principal of FTL Design Engineering Studio, New York, N.Y.

Notes

1 Alastair Gordon. Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties (Rizzoli, 2008).

2 Experiments in Art and Technology, Pavilion. E.P. Dutton & Co, 1972.

3 Henderson, Justin. “Volumes of Light: The Tensile Lighting System,” (Interiors, March 1986); Rae, Christine. “Designers Saturday Tent Show Goes on the Road!” (Leading Edge, June 1986).

Fabric Architecture | January 2013

Louis Vuitton Asia Pacific’s request was to develop an iconic custom solar shade skin for the flagship “Island Maison” at Sands Marina Bay, Singapore. The project is located in a floating “Crystal Pavilion” designed by Safdie Architects, an asymmetric building with irregularly angled façades, sited one degree north of the equator.

FTL’s challenge was to create a solar shade system that acts as a backdrop for the interior designed by Peter Marino Architect. The innovative panel design is the first of its kind: an off-set frame that is ultra flat, fully tensioned with no frame or shadow lines at its edges. The final design covers virtually all 2,323m² of interior façades and roof and is suggestive of LV’s nautical themes. Key design considerations included sun shading, UV protection, natural illumination, acoustics, visual control and lighting enhancement, all crafted within a strict minimalist aesthetic.

The solar shades are designed as a modular, fully tensioned flat panel system comprised of a powder-coated aluminum frame with stainless steel hold-offs wrapped in a fabric skin. A typical panel in the system is trapezoidal—approximately 1.5m by 4m and 51mm deep, weighing less then 68kg each. The frame is wrapped in two different fabric skins, expanded PTFE for the ceiling panels and PVC-coated polyester for the wall panels. The panels are arranged in linear strips and attach to the building’s steel columns by custom stainless steel fasteners. The fasteners are fully articulated and adjustable in three directions to make up for inconsistencies in the base structure and to provide a level continuous surface. The wall panels are demountable for maintenance and cleaning of the glass façade, requiring only a two-person crew and lift. The ceiling panels by contrast are hinged at one end and have an integrated hoist mechanism to allow for serviceability.

The design is a unique solution to extremely complex set of functional, aesthetic and technical requirements. First, unlike off-the-shelf fabric panel systems, the panels for LV required no visible framing or shadows at their edges. Second, the base building’s geometry (which has no right angles) presented a particular challenge. In addition, control of direct sunlight and views to the exterior were of prime importance to protect the displayed products from UV damage, focus the customers attention on the interior and help cool the space.

Extensive studies where made to understand and find the proper balance of natural light, view and aesthetic. The regular pattern of panels is selectively interrupted to frame key views. Finally, the fabric panels were to function as a skin to enhance the quality of lighting both natural and artificial. During the day, the solar shades provide a uniform quality of volumetric light, a soft glow that compliments the store’s interior finishes and displays. At night the shade system acts as a reflective surface to bounce interior light inward, creating a more enclosed sense, while simultaneously providing an exterior facing surface for nighttime lighting to reflect outward. The design won FTL a 2012 Award of Excellence from the Industrial Fabrics Association International.

Fabric Architecture | January 2013

By Frank Edgerton Martin

Like the traveling circuses in the 19th century and today, the field of new media requires workspaces that are flexible, open and able to accommodate large groups when necessary. Editors, animators and producers often work alone or online, but there are times they must travel to a shared space to perform their work.

In New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, this new office for Logan, a bicoastal media specialist, is visually crisp yet soft and diaphanous. It is a kind of “big top” tent for 21st century media production, with both collaborative spaces that are open and smaller work suites that offer acoustic privacy for small groups.

Industrial fabrics make this functionality possible. The office is located in a 604m² corner loft space, and is SO – IL’s design response to Logan’s work with mobile consultants that join the team on a per-project basis. This constantly changing work setting requires little in the way of personalized work stations and rooms, but a high level of flexibility. SO – IL, of Brooklyn, N.Y., rethought specialized office space by creating layers of transparency with two identical, symmetrical rectilinear spaces, each gathered around a 19.8 m continuous custom worktable. A stretched PVC luminous ceiling offers even, shadowless lighting across both spaces.

The length of this “great hall” is accentuated through the use of glass and fabric to create zones of privacy. A pane of glass divides the two workspaces, creating a mirror-effect that doubles the space. Hanging Gerriets trevira nylon fabric panels line the workrooms to create a stunning diaphanous effect and center-point perspective.

“They are both dividing and not dividing,” says architect Ilias Papageorgiou of the nylon screens. As SO – IL’s associate principal in charge of the project, he led the creation of spatial and material mock-ups in both their office and on-site. SO – IL tested a fabric and hanging system that could provide the right balance of opacity and luminosity. A key goal was to bring daylight into the two linear workrooms without overwhelming the visibility of digital screens.

SO – IL ultimately selected nylon panels by Gerriets, a theatrical equipment company, because this curtain offered the right balance of opacity and luminosity. A further discovery from the mock-up sessions was that the nylon panels could be attached to crossbars with Velcro®, an invention more associated with camping gear and tents than with corporate office design.

“The assumption for video has long been that they need to be in a dark basement hole,” Papageorgiou says, but this fabric solution allows for diffused natural light and a sense of changing exterior light and seasons. “The screens work to capture the colors and light projected from outside,” he adds. Although they appear stark white in photos, these screens also pick up subtle blues on clear winter days or golden tints on sunny afternoons.

Yet there is more to the story than just this pair of big tent rooms. Digital production also requires small editing suites and spaces where media professionals can work directly with clients to refine their projects in real-time. SO – IL created three dark and quiet spaces—one lined with grey ripple felt engineered by Toronto, Ont., Canada’s Felt Studio. The other two suites are lined with felt by Boston, Mass.’s FilzFelt, a firm specializing in German fabrics.

Papageorgiou met SO – IL’s co-founder Florian Idenburg while a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Idenburg, who was a professor there, also worked for the design firm SANNAA and served as the project architect for the metal mesh clad New Museum in Manhattan, profiled in the March 2008 Fabric Architecture. Today, SO – IL, an architecture firm of roughly 10 people, experiments with meshes and fabrics for interior and exterior uses in projects around the world.

Contributing editor Frank Edgerton Martin’s feature story on the sustainable design features of the American University of Beirut campus appeared in the Sept/Oct 2011 issue.

Fabric Architecture | January 2013

Denton Community College, near Manchester, England, is a comprehensive school for boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 16. It specializes in performing arts and sports. A recent £24 million addition to the school expanded its classrooms and support facilities and included a number of spaces that give students more venues for performances of all kinds.

This outdoor amphitheater, located in a central courtyard called a teaching oasis, serves as the perfect backdrop for a stage that can adapt to any school performance. The amphitheater seating is covered by two identical tensioned fabric structures of a unique blend of hypar and conic forms that add flare to the setting.

Placed against the bright green façade of the new addition, the 5.5m by 5m mirror-image canopies—designed and fabricated by Fabric Architecture Ltd.—add intimacy and protection for audiences. As access to the courtyard was restricted during construction, all the steel work and canopy rigging had to be brought in on hand carts instead of the usual powered telescopic handlers, an exercise in coordinating all the construction trades.

The fluid space created by the uplifting forms of the canopies has brought attention to the college program from the surrounding community, such that the space is frequently rented out for local events. Cath Walker, deputy head teacher of the college says, “We have had many visitors to the College and all comment on its calm and purposeful atmosphere.”