The design and editorial direction of Fabric Architecture magazine has remained consistent—with minor tweaks and updates—for more than 10 years. FA readers and the architectural community are constantly on the lookout for new information and design knowledge, which is why FA’s editors and staff are making some important changes in the content and design of the magazine.

Here are some of the changes you can expect, beginning with the January issue:

• More technical information in every project review.
• More “how-to” descriptions of projects so readers can better understand how a project’s technical and practical fabrication challenges were met and successfully solved.
• More in-depth information from industry experts so that readers can better understand how the specialty fabrics industry is contributing to improved architectural performance.
• Better, clearer graphics that show how a structure, awning or canopy is constructed so that readers can see how they too can benefit from industry expertise and how the industry’s accumulated knowledge and skills can help them accomplish their design goals.

Additional technical information within project case studies is emphasized by a new addition to each feature story, a full page called “Project Specs” that highlights a single detail from the feature story project with a full description of how that detail fits into the bigger picture of the total project.

Moreover, what began a little more than a year ago with our improved and updated website—promoting news and case studies beyond that found in the print edition—will include more online-only projects and news to keep you abreast of the rapidly changing international scene of fabric architecture.

We hope you’ll agree these changes are an improvement and make the publication even more useful to your practice. Of course, we welcome constructive feedback and suggestions for making Fabric Architecture the best resource available.

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

Given the number of post-Olympics economic hardship cases in recent years, there is an increasing urgency on the part of the Olympic Games organizers to not leave a burden on hosting cities. Perhaps the best to comply with the net-zero concept in this regard is the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games (the November issue’s feature topic), where many of the sport venues have been designed as temporary structures.

The London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has been especially careful to not permit construction of any sport venue that cannot have immediate post-Olympics uses that contribute back to the community or that cannot find new uses.

There are many parallels between the Olympics and a traveling music show. Musicians travel worldwide, stopping in major cities to perform, then pull up stakes and move on to the next city—with little regard for the aftermath. With the fleet-footed Olympics, however, what is left behind has lasting impact. For London, all venues will be repurposed for post-game everyday use, with the prime goal of minimizing their energy impact or ongoing maintenance. Some of the temporary venues in the 2012 Olympic Games have been designed to be dismantled and redeployed in other parts of the country or in other countries of the EU (see "Temporary basketball arena for the London 2012 Olympics"), while others will have their constituent materials recycled (see "London 2012 Olympics Water Polo Arena").* Some are permanent, but have incorporated fabric as an economic aid to reduce cost and inefficiencies (see "Velodrome utilizes fabric in strategic ways").

Of the four feature stories in this issue on Olympic venues, the project that most embodies the concept of low carbon footprint—the Olympic Stadium—depends heavily on fabric to reduce its carbon debt.

Witness also examples of low-carbon impact with the BMW Guggenheim Lab, recently constructed on a vacant lot in New York City, and the equally transient red shade sails at an Iowa community college, where the temporary nature is seasonal. Around the globe, fabric is on the move!

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

*Two-thirds of the materials and elements in Wilkinson Eyre’s temporary Basketball Arena can be reused or recycled after the Games.

In the interest of driving innovation toward highly efficient housing designs, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has run a biennial Solar Decathlon competition between university architecture schools from across the country and from invited foreign design schools. As student design competitions go, the Solar Decathlon is a biggie. A winning school not only gets bragging rights, but can win in any of 10 specialized categories judged important by a jury of government reps and industry experts, such as overall energy efficiency, architectural quality, marketability, affordability and engineering. The team that best blends all of these evaluative criteria wins the grand prize for top scores in all 10 categories, and the possibility (by implication) of having their concept reproduced by a manufacturer.

To be invited to participate is an honor in itself. As the student designs must actually be built, fully functional and put on display on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the number of participating schools is limited to 20. Fabric Architecture was attracted to one team’s solar house proposal for the obvious reason that it was different than any other student design on the Mall. The CHIP (Compact, Hyper-Insulated Prototype) by the student team from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) had a white pillow-like wrap of fabric around the bulk of the structure. Whoa! This was a clearly radical approach to designing a solar house. To get a better understanding of what the students were attempting, FA interviewed some of the students responsible for the project. The design team included recent SCI-Arc grads Elisabeth Niegert, project manager and Reed Finlay, project manager and practicing architect, and Caltech undergraduate Fei Yang, engineering project manager, and two recent SCI-Arc graduates, Robert Gilson and Catherine Caldwell, who were largely responsible for researching and designing the fabric wrap that holds the CHIP’s r-40 insulation in place.

FA: What brought you to decide on placing the fabric wrap around the outside of your solar house? It looks almost like quilting or tufted upholstery!

Robert Gilson: As the goal for the Solar Decathlon is to design a net zero energy home, our team came to the conclusion that it was not enough to convey the image of a solar house by simply placing PV panels on the roof. Architecturally, the team felt we had to go further in expressing the extreme energy efficiency of our design in the very materials that contributed to that energy efficiency. In our case, we reversed the notion of putting insulation in the usual place—normally placed between the framing of a house with the vapor barrier outside that—so that our vapor barrier is on the outside in full view. This solved a number of problems that adhere to traditional construction methods. First of all, when insulation is placed between the wood studs of a frame-built house, there are hundreds of points where a thermal break is created reducing the R rating. By putting the building wrap on the outside, many of these thermal issues are solved. Here we can have 15 inches of insulation batting outside the framed shell and cover it by a contiguous membrane—almost like a tailored jacket for the house. This proves that the insulation [Editor: dubbed “outsulation” by the team] is working to highest efficiency to get our r-40 rating.

Catherine Caldwell: Another key factor in this decision was affordability. The judging criteria for the Solar Decathlon placed high value on affordable designs, and we found the vinyl wrap was very affordable, more so than more standard architectural fabrics used in tensile structures. It was very easy to work with and we found it to have high performance results. We began testing these concepts two years ago and regularly since then.

RG: The techniques we used to construct CHIP are not new.

CC: What IS innovative about CHIP is that we took older construction techniques and found new applications for them. By placing the wrap [assembly] on the exterior we essentially eliminated the roofing and siding contractors in the construction equation, thus reducing overall cost.

RG: The thing we heard most often from the visiting public was a concern for the durability of the fabric. It was most hard for them to understand that the architectural fabric we used (and about architectural fabric in general, for that matter) is not like the cheap, flimsy fabrics used for billboards and such. We told people to think in terms of the fabric used in spacesuits that are durable yet still flexible.

FA: What exactly is the fabric you used?

CC: It is a 24 oz. Blackout Vinyl from Naizil Coated Fabrics.

RG: We worked with Eide Industries from the beginning of our two-year design development, and Eide’s [vice-president of marketing] Joe Belli helped us immeasurably in all phases, also leading us to Naizil for the fabric source.

CC: We got a lot of help from Joe at Eide, Paul Petizian from Naizil, and from the Vinyl Institute. Eide shared some of their expertise helping us tailor the fabric to fit the building.

FA: If you had to do this all over again, what would you do differently, now that you know all the pitfalls?

CC: There are two ways to respond to that. First of all, it is incredibly important that the concept of innovation must be supported by the team in order to move forward toward the goal of innovation. If the team isn’t behind it all the way, innovation is difficult to achieve. After much debate, we were lucky to have everyone’s buy-in on this, and received tremendous support at all stages from SCI-Arc administration. Second, now that we know about the world of architectural fabric and the resources available in what we found to be a tight-knit network of industry professionals, we probably would have tried to take more advantage of the fabrication possibilities out there and applied it to the wrap.

RG: Yes, I think we could have tailored the vinyl for a certain geometry, a tighter, more tailored fit—almost like a garment on the building so that the result could have more actively supported the expression of the outsulation. We could have expressed more wrinkles in the fabric surface.

CC: It could have been more expressive of the architectonic qualities, not simply a cover.

RG: It’s almost like [with a fully sculpted wrap] it could be as a Michelangelo sculpture, more beautiful.

Fabric: 24-oz. Blackout vinyl from Naizil Coated Fabrics Inc., Bolton, Ontario, Canada

Fabrication advice: Eide Industries Inc., Cerritos, Calif.

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

There’s a lot of hype these days about saving the environment, promoting species diversity and slowing global warming. “Regenerative” or “restorative” design currently is a hot topic in landscape architecture. Moving beyond the idea of sustainability (first popularized in the 1980s) regenerative projects don’t just maintain existing ecologies and conserve resources, they actually give something back to the earth to improve air quality, enrich soils and restore bio-diversity. How can geotextiles, awnings, shade structures, green wall systems and other fabric applications support such efforts?

One answer comes from Paul Kephart, profiled in the September issue by contributing editor Frank Edgerton Martin. Kephart argues that true regenerative design must use integrated technology to simultaneously accomplish many “stacked” goals such as indoor air quality, energy production and water harvesting.

Martin eloquently states the case for this approach to design: “Much of today’s discussion of regenerative design owes a debt to the work of the late John T. Lyle, a professor of landscape architecture at California Polytechnic University Pomona (Cal-Poly), who first popularized the concept of ‘resilience’ to express how a brownfield site or metropolitan Los Angeles contained the innate ability to repair the ravages of human developments. In 1994, he published the seminal book, Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development. Cal-Poly’s John T. Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies makes the following definition of its work:

Regenerative studies places emphasis on the development of community support systems which are capable of being restored, renewed, revitalized or regenerated through the integration of natural processes, community action and human behavior.

Martin continues: “Both social and architectural regeneration in Lyle’s sense is community based. It starts at the grass-roots and relies on community interdependence. How can the fabrics industry work with designers and engineers to craft buildings that re-use their own graywater, cool themselves and clean the air?” Although it may sound far-fetched, regenerative landscapes are entirely within our reach and may well transform the way we build and heal the land on local and regional scales. Moreover, it’s clear that specialty fabrics can and must play a significant role in accomplishing these goals.

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

The treatment of flexible metal “cloth” goes back at least to the Middle Ages when craftsmen developed chain mail as a protective covering for knights to wear like clothing. Indeed, mail has its etymologic roots in the Latin macula, or mesh. Contributing editor Frank Edgerton Martin, who writes for FA about landscape design, says that fabric “Has so many connotations that are beyond just cloth or flexible material as we think of it. The term can also be applied like ‘the fabric of experience’ or the ‘urban fabric.’ In context, we know what they mean.”

Equally challenging to our understanding of building materials are new products like ETFE that are not woven but extruded in wide sheets called “foil.” This material, like metal mesh, acts structurally very similarly to fabric and is designed using fittings, hardware and connections that follow those for tensile fabric structures.*

In 2000, The New York Times published an article that reported a startling fact: contrary to previous opinions, the art and technology of weaving is at least as important to human history as the invention of stone and metal tools. The early development of string (made from plants) led to the invention of weaving and thus the creation of fabric. “With the invention of string and the power to weave,” says the Times, “people could construct elaborate yet lightweight containers in which to carry, store and cook food.” By extension, people could build dwellings, and indeed the earliest found evidence of human habitation is of woven fiber. So what is your take? Is metal mesh a fabric? Post your response in the comments section below.

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

*Structural engineer Craig G. Huntington, president of Huntington Design Assoc., notes that “the design and analytical techniques used by engineers are generally similar for wire mesh and for conventional fabrics, and both make use of curvilinear forms both for load resistance and as a key component of their appearance.”

Commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery as part of its yearly temporary installation of architecture designs, the Serpentine Pavilion this year is constructed of wood framing, plywood and a fabric scrim coated with a black paste and sand mixture that creates a heavy, somber setting wedded solidly to the ground. Any light that passes into the pavilion space is through the central open-air atrium garden created by opaque, wide-walled corridors that lead visitors into the central space.

Past Pavilion designs have included work by such architectural luminaries as Jean Nouvel (red fabric awnings and scrims, 2010), Rem Koolhaas with Cecil Balmond (air-inflated fabric balloon roof, 2006), and the first Pavilion constructed in 2000 by Zaha Hadid, also of fabric, published in Fabric Architecture’s March/April 2002 issue. In 2007, Hadid and Patrick Schumacher designed a temporary fabric structure featured on the lawn next to the gallery.

Zumthor, on the other hand must feel that recognizing the temporary nature of these pavilions is to be denied at all cost, lest it reflect back on his seriousness as an architect of international repute.* The weight of dark, massive walls and solemn tunnels that open to the central garden, designed by Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf (the High Line, NYC), means business, and contemplation, if the handy benches that the designer has provided tucked under wide overhangs on the perimeter of the atrium are to be used as intended. Serious space for serious, weighty thought.

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

*Zumthor was awarded the Pritzker Prize (architecture’s Nobel & Oscar in one) in 2009.

The Sepertentine Gallery Pavilion 2011 is sponsored by:
Maybach
Arup
Stanhope plc
Mace Group

In May, the design of two temporary and mutable structures were announced: INFLATABLE, designed by Leon Lai and Eric Tan of PinkCloud.DK, Copenhagen, Denmark; and BMW_guggenheim lab, designed by atelier bow-wow, Tokyo, Japan, each exploiting the unique qualities of fabric clad structures to create bold, inspiring buildings.

This week we hear of the completion of a temporary basketball arena for the 2012 London Olympics, a fabric-clad and mobile (after the Games) venue designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects with Sinclair Knight Merz and KSS. A rigid metal frame structure is covered by a translucent, minimal mass skin and is expected to provide a sustainable legacy for the London Games.

Just keep moving, just keep moving…

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

You could not be faulted if the above headline caused some confusion. After all, architecture is a technology of ground gripping “hard” materials and spacesuits are a rarified “hard” science of trajectories and protective coverings, n’est pas? And the further notion that “soft” spacesuits, haute couture and the design of brassieres have a genetic link with fabric architecture is even more far fetched, you might think.

But hold on! The connections between these fields of endeavor turn out not to be far apart. The threads that bind these rarified disciplines are nicely and thoroughly described in the new book Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux, assistant professor of architecture at the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley.

Using the metaphor of layers instead of chapters, de Monchaux examines 21 individual technology histories, a chapter each to represent the 21 layers of fabric that went into the making of the Apollo A7L spacesuit that protected the NASA astronauts Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on their historic walk on the surface of the moon, July 21, 1969. He covers the postwar “new look” of fashion, defense planning, multiple spacesuit technologies and their contractors, the invention of laytex-coated fabric and its influence on clothing, and, most astoundingly, the transfer of NASA control systems engineering to architectural and urban planning concepts of the 1960s and 70s.

The book is thoroughly researched and a joy to read. In a chapter titled “Bras and the battlefields” (Layer 9), de Monchaux unpacks the context of the culturally turbulent 1960s, a changing feminine aesthetic and their influence on the unique internal corporate culture of several competing spacesuit design teams, including the ultimate winner for fabricating the Apollo mission suits ILC Specialty Products Division (later renamed ILC Dover for its location in Dover, Del.), a spin-off of the International Laytex Corp., creators of the Playtex “Living Bra” and other undergarments. “How should we distinguish between Playtex and ILC,” says de Monchaux, “between girdle and space gear? Each piece of clothing—girdle and pressure garment [spacesuit]—prepared its occupant for an extreme space, an extreme midcentury atmosphere.”

There is, in truth, a direct link with NASA and a seminal event in the technological development of fabric structures: the 1970 Osaka world’s fair. The U.S. Pavilion at that exposition—designed by Davis, Brody with Chermayeff & Geismar and structural engineer David Geiger—was an air-supported fabric roof that housed an exhibit of U.S. space technology including capsules from the Mercury 7, Gemini 12 and Apollo 8 missions, and a number of spacesuits. These soft forms of both building and NASA technology spoke of the future and of logic, the type of logic embodied in nature and the physics of interplanetary travel as well as the physics of tensioned fabric buildings. The design of fabric buildings and of soft spacesuits took a giant leap back then that continues to echo today.

“It has been the aim of this book,” says de Monchaux in his concluding chapter (Layer 21), “to argue that the softness of the Apollo spacesuit is indicative of a special affinity between the bodies of Apollo astronauts and the spacesuits that protected them—especially as differentiated from the remainder of Apollo’s vast systems infrastructure. As such, their iconic image should project not a mastery of nature through technology, but rather a necessary sympathy to those parts of nature that, like our own bodies, defy easy systemization.”

*Spacesuite: Fashioning Apollo, Nicholas de Monchaux, MIT Press, 2011.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor
bnwright@ifai.com

I had to laugh when I saw a recent posting on a New Zealand TV news website announcing one New Zealand tent maker’s proposal for covering over the earthquake-stricken downtown of southern New Zealand’s metropolis Christchurch. Don’t’ get me wrong, fabricator Warwick Bell’s design was actually quite inspired. It was the inane public commentary that got me.

Invariably, when “far out” ideas like these are posited (recall R. Buckminster Fuller’s proposal for doming New York City) people feel like their leg is getting pulled. Same for my (and Frank Edgerton Martin’s) proposal for adapting Various Architects’ portable inflatable venue as a peripatetic Minnesota Vikings’ football stadium. Despite the very real (and proven) technology of transportable fabric structures, these ideas are somehow, in the public’s mind, too fantastic to be believed. Folks, believe!

—Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

How many times have you read headlines that shout at you that the future has arrived sooner than we thought? It wouldn’t have quite the emphatic tone if prognosticators were to say “The future is a long way off!” Oh, in that case I needn’t worry, you say. Yet, a recent book by quantum physicist Michio Kaku, “Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100” (Doubleday, 389pp., 2011), in a sense says just this: here’s what to expect in slightly less than 100 years.

Kaku interviewed more than 300 scientists about future predictions in the fields of computers, medicine, nanotechnology, space exploration and energy production. “We’ll have X-ray vision and space elevators, live twice as long [as now] and be able to move things with our minds,” he says. He goes on to predict that we’ll be able to go online simply by blinking our eyes with the help of “wired” contact lenses. Sensors in our clothes will leap into action if we’re hurt.

I don’t know about you, but I fully don’t expect to be around a century from now to check up on all of Kaku’s predictions. What I do know is that architecture today has already been influenced by developments that a mere decade ago seemed futuristic. Besides the obvious digital innovations in design and document management software, the global sharing of real-time construction management that allows design firms to direct projects on the far side of the earth while working at home offices down the street has fundamentally changed the business of architecture.

When it comes to fabric architecture, no less innovative has been the development of highly sophisticated nano-level coatings on fabrics that have improved performance of buildings by reducing pollution (some TiO2 coatings break down pollution), or the fine tuning of energy use (ETFE pillow cladding systems used on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Aquatic Center automatically control solar gain), or the improvement in building optimization (retractable exterior shades and canopies with PV capabilities).

What do YOU think will be the future of building design with respect to textile material use? I invite readers to submit ideas and predictions of how architecture will change in the near future due to innovations in fabric architecture. We’ll post the most reasonable, and far out.

–Bruce N. Wright, AIA, Editor

Ban’s design has been simplified a bit since his Paper Log Houses developed for the Kobe earthquake in 1995.

Fabric for shelter makes incredible sense with regards to unstable ground. Read more about Ban’s latest effort at Inhabitat at inhabitat.com.

Fabric Architecture has published additional examples of disaster relief or temporary shelters.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture magazine.

Our January 2011 issue theme, how to estimate the cost of awnings and canopies (“Show me the money–Part 2”), is the follow up to last year’s cost estimating of tension structures. Pricing a project is important, especially in the bid process. Too high and you risk losing the job; too low and you end up eating the extras, or more. And let’s face it, with today’s world economy, everyone must watch the bottom line. That is just good business. As with last year’s cost piece, this year we have a handful of industry experts give their best advice on how to plan for and price awnings and canopies, and what architects should look for in fabrication services to get the best results.

Also in this issue, we look at how designers can control costs in fitting out interiors by using fabric as walls or space shapers (“Interior moves”), a highly cost-effective means of giving the interiors of your buildings something unique as well as durable. Finally, we profile landscape architect Annette Wilkus, a master at translating other’s designs into reality on the ground (“Urban fabric”). Wilkus helped make sure New York City’s High Line linear park was sustainable and buildable, using geotextiles to ensure that proper drainage and water retention kept the raised mile-long park green. Again, money wisely spent.

Editor’s note: You can find additional information on this website. Read more stories, check out the latest news and take advantage of continuing education units. Fabric Architecture magazine and website are part of the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI). From the website you can click to Fabric Architecture’s sister publications and search more than 6,460 articles. While you’re there, click on the link to IFAI at the top of the page or go to www.ifai.com and visit the association’s new website. IFAI contributes to the prosperity of the specialty fabrics industry by providing a global marketplace for innovative products and services, relevant education, promotion and networking opportunities.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture magazine.

Transmaterial 3:
A Catalog of Materials that Redefine our Physical Environment
Princeton Architectural Press, 2010, 252 pp, paperbackEdited by Blaine Brownell, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture, Transmaterial 3 is an extension of Brownell’s successful series of books about new and sustainable materials for use in architecture and design. As with the first two editions of his book, Brownell (see "Creating more with less," FA Nov/Dec 2010) collects and evaluates more than 200 products and processes, condensing information into handy single-page formats that summarize salient attributes, with numerous color photos (best of all, images of the material in application), plus he provides contact information and website resources for each if the reader wants more. All materials are grouped in 10 different categories, including fabric and digital, but nearly every category has textile-like products that are of interest. Transmaterial 3 is well worth digging into for new materials to use on your next project.

Materials and the Environment
Eco-informed material choice
Butterworth-Heinemann, 2009, 385 pp, paperbackCambridge University professor emeritus and materials scientist Michael F. Ashby has followed up his previous textbooks on materials selection (Materials Selection in Mechanical Design and Materials and Design: The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design, co-authored with Kara Johnson) to great effect with his newest tome that emphasizes sustainable and ecological analysis of materials. Like Ashby’s other textbooks, the information is reasoned, clearly presented and “chunked” into digestible sizes for easy assimilation. Best of all are his modulus-density charts with helpful selection criteria, and a chapter devoted to highly useful material profiles that make comparisons between materials actually enjoyable. Materials and the Environment is structured for classroom use, but I find it to be one of the most practical guides to the subject that it should be a desk reference in every design office.

Tensile Surface Structures:
A Practical Guide to Cable and Membrane Construction
Ernst & Sohn, 2010, 230 pp, hardcoverAuthor Dipl.-Ing. Dr.Michael Seidel, lecturer on membrane structures at the Institute of Architecture and Design, Technical University of Vienna, has written a very thorough and useful book about the technical details and construction methods for building tensioned fabric structures. Chapters are devoted to materials and load-bearing properties, patterning and cutting, joints and detailing, construction management, scheduling, tensioning methods and preparation and preassembly. The numerous case studies of projects are extremely informative and valuable, especially because of the close-up photos of each step in the construction process.

From Cape Town to Brasilia
New Stadiums by GMP
Prestel Verlag, 2010, 240 pp, hardcover, German and EnglishAuthor Volkwin Marg, founding partner in the firm Gerkan, Marg and Partners (GMP), and professor at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, has edited and written a beautiful book about his firm’s extensive work in sporting stadiums. GMP’s most recent work —three major stadia in Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth, South Africa— was highlighted this summer when the 2010 World Cup Soccer games were broadcast worldwide from South Africa. A good chunk of the book covers these stadia, and an entire section is devoted to four stadia in Brazil to be built for the 2014 World Cup Soccer and 2016 Olympic games. As with many design firm profile books, this one is designed to look good in the office lobby because of the many gorgeous, large-format color photos, but unlike most coffee table books, detailed diagrams and construction photos add extra layers of information to the ensemble—intelligence and beauty; a winning combination.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture magazine.

This is why I feel the need for this issue’s focus: the fabric used in building fabric architecture has great potential for inspiring designers to do great things. Witness the three case studies in the feature story “Fabulous Fabrics” where we see designers using ETFE as a wind screen, Tensotherm™ fabric for a retrofitted roof and a bi-metallic and fabric combination sunscreen that is highly responsive to the sun. Couple these cases with 10 products that claim sustainable characteristics, and we hope you’ll agree that getting down to the material level is where it’s at.

After you’ve reviewed these hand-selected fabrics, we think you’ll agree with the 18th century English landscape designer, Lancelot “Capability” Brown, (who gained his moniker for claiming that landscapes had “capability” for improvement and who established the quintessential image of the English garden*), that today’s sustainable architectural fabrics (“Materiality Green”) are capable of establishing the (design) landscape of today, if not improving tomorrow’s.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture magazine.

Temporary structures actually make a lot of sense in today’s changeable world. And fabric architecture is ideally suited to meet these business needs. Take a look at these two recent temporary structures, both in London.

The first is Frank’s Café and Campari Bar (in the Peckham district), designed by Practice Architecture, a London design-build team that focuses on “small scale projects with an emphasis on pragmatic design.” Led by three architect/designers—Paloma Gormley, Lettice Drake and Henry Stringer—Practice Architecture runs a hands-on operation that uses teams of unskilled volunteers to construct projects like Frank’s Café, a rooftop summer outpost Campari bar for the Hannah Barry Gallery in London’s Peckham neighborhood and within view of central London.

What I like about it is the fresh, bold form and casual atmosphere created by the bright red fabric canopy that extends across the roof level of a 10-story car park. Not only does the structure express itself boldly (angled wood struts project over the car park roof edge at a jaunty angle to hold red strapping taut overhead, which in turn supports the red fabric canopy), but it does so with found materials. “Each ratchet strap is supported by a set of three timber columns constructed from reclaimed scaffolding planks bolted together,” say the designers on their project website. The café’s minimal material palette also extends to the bar and furniture, all constructed from the same reclaimed timber. The extendable fabric roof is made of PVC fabric suspended from D rings that slide along the red ratchet straps. “It’s operated using a simple system of ropes and pulleys, like that of the rigging of a boat,” says Paloma Gormley in an e-mail message. It’s come down, now that the season has changed, but will reappear next summer for a new crowd of admirers. So, instead of 2.25 years, this restaurant can expect a lifespan of around four months—recurringly.

The Skyroom is another contemporaneous structure that also recently appeared on a rooftop. In this case the rooftop sits above the Architecture Foundation’s historic Magdalen House on Tooley Street and was commissioned by the house’s landlord, Lake Estates, to open in time for London Design Week, 20 September. Designed by David Kohn, Ulla Tervo, Olivia Fauvelle and Jamie Baxter of David Kohn Architects, the Skyroom is constructed of steel with a copper mesh façade and a roof of ETFE pillows. Contractor was REM Projects and ETFE roof fabricator was Architen Landrell with Inflate as consultants; structural engineer was Form Structural Design.

Because of planning restrictions and deference to the historic building, the structure is set back from the host building perimeter to limit the Skyroom’s visibility from the street. According to a press release, the project went from detailed design to completion in eight weeks. It’s not clear how long the Skyroom is intended to remain, but it’s sudden appearance and ephemeral qualities are magical and suggest that more could be done with every city’s neglected roofscapes besides planting green carpets for birds and other migrating species.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture magazine.

Might also the buildings be recycled into other social uses? For example, the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg, designed by Boogertman Urban Edge and Populous, could easily be repurposed as an apartment complex and community center. The inside circulation path at ground level could become a connecting street, the upper levels inside the framework could support plug-in dwelling units, and the playing field could host a village garden, a park and play area for residents.

Many of the 10 venues used for the World Cup games were refurbished existing stadiums. However, four of the stadiums (including Soccer City) incorporated fabric into the roofs, and of these four three were completely new structures that exploited the sculptural qualities of fabric in dynamic designs: Greenpoint, Cape Town; Moses Mabhida Stadium, Durban; and Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, Port Elizabeth. The fabric roofs were an economical means to spanning large distances and provided much-needed shade in the South African sun. Fabric also made it economical to retrofit many of the much older existing arenas.

South Africa gained a wonderful legacy of world-class venues in these new and retro-fitted stadia. Now it must maintain them in a world-class manner befitting their quality designs. Or re-use them in an equally creative way.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture.

The technology of fabric structures has evolved over the past 60 years (into a unique and specialized form of engineering and architecture) with its own jargon and "language" of details.

There are at least three historical technologies that have been adapted to make the parts and details of a fabric structure: sailing ships with their "rigging" (a term that still applies to the cables and hardware of current fabric structures); the Arab "black tent" of the nomadic tribes of north Africa and Middle East (the form and tensile principles of tensioned fabric developed by the Bedouin by the eighteenth century are transferable); and circus tents from the nineteenth century (with their fabric clamping and tensioning mechanisms adapted to contemporary applications)

The circus tent ("chapiteau" in Europe, "big top" in North America) is where we get "bail ring" a key element in the design of tension structures used to evenly distribute the stresses that converge on the peak of a mast support, thereby relieving the fabric from excess forces and preventing tearing.

As with all technology transfers, the form and words to describe the new technology are adapted from a previous technology. Thus, "horseless carriage" first described what became an automobile; a mast (from sailing ships) described (and continues to describe) a vertical structural support for tension structures.

Fabric architecture technology is continuing to evolve and adapt new materials and absorb new technologies. Today air-inflated structures (think the 2008 Beijing Olympics National Aquatics Center "Watercube" with its ETFE pillows) are incorporating pneumatic technologies and detailing, and nanotechnology driven chemistries and engineering are creating new forms of architecture (e.g., fabric coatings that "eat" pollution, breakdown grime or convert movement [mechanical energy] into electrical currents). All of these will need terminology to describe them. The fun is just beginning.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture.

Interesting to note is NASA space architect Kriss Kennedy's rosy prediction that NASA was on the brink of a new wave of extraterrestrial structures that would incorporate the latest development in high-tech textiles. We all know the outcome of the past decade with its grim economic times and the subsequent impact on ambitious plans. Plus ça change...?

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture.

What is the equivalent innovation today? It is always hard to have a clear perspective while in the midst of things, so we'll not know the answer for decades. But we can speculate, and within the specialty fabrics industry that sustains this publication we may discover sources of innovation that may transform architecture in the future.

One source that aims to inspire is being offered by the Industrial Fabrics Foundation (IFF), which has launched the Innovation Award, meant to inspire and spur to new heights the worldwide specialty fabrics industry.*

The award is open to any company that has developed and manufactured an innovative product related to the specialty fabrics industry. Products can be entered under one of three categories: fabric, hardware or machinery; end product; or process. What does this mean for architects and designers? Nothing immediately, but potentially a great deal. For example, recent research in façade systems by architects working with fabricators of ETFE systems has explored the potentials for reduced energy use in buildings, something that has a huge impact on the future of the built environment.

Follow your muse to inspire others with original ideas in building. Spread the word about the IFF Innovation Award. Someone you know (perhaps yourself?) may have the next big idea that could advance architecture with significant improvements in performance.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture.

Deadline for entry is July 16, 2010.

This is exciting and positive news, but from our perspective not a new idea, as this journal reported several years ago on a similar design for the invitation-only, annual Serpentine Pavilion designs for the Serpentine Gallery in London, specifically the pavilion designed by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond (see FA Mar/Apr 2007.) The good news is that this technology has finally arrived in this country at a time of economic stress, offering hope that institutions like the Hirshhorn can shake off the doldrums of diminishing funds and still shake up the cultural landscape (albeit within tighter budgets).

Other recent projects of hope: Various Architects’ transportable mobile performance venue (see Mar/Apr, pg. 30); Parsons Brinckerhoff/FTL Design Engineering Studio’s Rosa Parks Transit Center (see Sept/Oct, pg. 6); Zaha Hadid’s Burnham pavilion in Chicago (see Nov/Dec, pg. 6); and the streets of New York City are to be improved with UrbanSHEDs of fabric (see Samples this issue, pg. 6.)**

You, too, can bring light and hope to the design world. Consider using fabric to reduce cost, extend a project’s potential and life cycle, or improve future adaptability of facilities, as shown with the Hirshhorn Museum project. The potential is endless.

Bruce N. Wright, AIA, is the editor of Fabric Architecture.

*The New York Times, Dec. 15, 2009.
**Fabric Architecture’s website has a searchable database of more than 350 articles, including the articles mentioned here.

November 1, 2009 marked the beginning of the 13th year of my editorship of Fabric Architecture magazine and my, how it has flown! I have visible proof of how swift time can fly in my 13-year old son who has changed significantly over the same period. Fabric architecture as a field of study also has changed radically, going from what appeared to be a marginal branch of architectural practice to what now appears to be an avant garde. After all, if the likes of Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster (see his Dresden Main Station refurbishment in ’07) and Rem Koolhaas (see his Serpentine Pavilion of ’06 with engineer Cecil Balmond) are playing with the material, it means fabric has finally gotten onto the pallet of desirable building materials with influential designers. And that can only be good for all of us. So the number 13 is not one to be feared from my perspective.

November also marks 20 years of FA, an equally significant period of development and innovation for our industry, and the beginning, I would hope, of another 20 years of publication and industry innovations. Looking back, I’d say the most exciting developments have been with new materials and technologies such as ETFE, PV-integrated tension structures and phase-change textiles, which have opened up new avenues of design and excited a new generation of designers. Perhaps the most significant issue shaping the industry—indeed all industries—is sustainability, a societal force that is remaking how everyone does business. There is a growing recognition throughout society of the need for construction techniques that have low-embodied carbon footprints, an area of practice where specialty textiles can shine.

To celebrate this journal’s anniversary and the journey we’ve all traversed, throughout the next 13 months in each issue we will highlight landmark stories from FA’s past. These retrospectives, starting with this issue’s look back at Eberhard Zeidler’s Canada Place, can be found on our newly redesigned web site (www.fabricarchitecturemag.com) where I invite your thoughts on this industry’s future.

The construction of tension structures also has its unique terms, such as abseiler. A term used chiefly in the UK and Germany — where much of the advancement of tension structure construction methods has occurred over the past 50 years — abseiler comes from the German abseilen, meaning to “rope down” or rappel down by means of a rope. According to Roger Frison-Rocheand and Sylvain Jouty in their History of Mountain Climbing (Paris, 1996), the origin of the term can be traced to Jean Estéril Charlet, a Chamonix guide who devised a method of roping down the French Alps summit Petit Dru in 1879.

The term abseiler when used in fabric architecture refers to the daring men (to date they are mostly men) who climb to the tops of large tension structure masts and cables to fasten fabric to the structure. And it takes the fearlessness of mountain climbers to safely climb the heights of some recent tension structures, such as Murphy/Jahn’s Sony Center in Berlin, where the peak of the cone-shaped roof rises up to 67m above the atrium floor. Abseilers made it possible to construct such a complex roof.

To create a new standard of sidewalk shed design that “improves the pedestrian experience while maintaining or exceeding the required safety standards in New York City,” the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY) launched an international competition to design the sidewalk shed of the future, with the urbanSHED competition.

The DOB and the AIANY recently announced three finalists from a competition total of 164 entries submitted by architects, engineers, designers and students from around the world. I was surprised and pleased to learn that all three finalists incorporated specialty fabric in their designs in some manner, acknowledging in effect that fabrics are naturally and historically part of the construction site aesthetic. Of particular note is “urbanCLOUD” designed by Kevin Erickson and team from KNEStudio, New York, that uses air as a structural medium to replace the heavy, dark sheds most often found throughout the city, using double membrane ETFE beams supported by light-gage aluminum frames.