TEXTILES.ORG
By Mason Riddle
How it was done
Project design team leader for RSP, Beau Dromiack, described the firm’s thinking behind their use of fabrics for shading key portions of the ASU campus buildings: “For the most prominent building of a trio of academic buildings, the highest balcony of the tallest building has a wall of translucent PTFE fabric that shades the open air student space, actually making it habitable during the hottest time of the Arizona year.” This open-air promenade is integrated with a latticework of glass and PV modules on the roof that feed energy back into the college’s electrical grid.
“These fabric panels were designed for projected images at nighttime viewing,” says Steve Hawes, principal of PCI LLC, who fabricated the panels. The fabric is wrapped tightly over the edge hembars and fastened to the latticework.