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Pvilion’s solar ag buildings could take farmers off the grid

May 1st, 2025

Pvilion and Accu-Steel Inc. are testing a heavy-duty solar-powered industrial and agricultural building that can supply power for farmers. The fabric is NovaShield® HDPE. Image: Pvilion Solar-structure manufacturer Pvilion, of Brooklyn, N.Y., is partnering with fabric ag building manufacturer Accu-Steel Inc., headquartered in Templeton, Iowa, to test an “agrivoltaic” structure for farmers. With the addition […]

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GuildWorks gives a California park its first shade

March 1st, 2025

River Park in Petaluma, Calif., is transforming. Its inaugural structure is the peninsula’s first shaded area—there aren’t even any trees—underneath a shade sail array composed of diamond shapes and providing a covered area more than 70 feet in diameter. It rises 20 feet and was created by GuildWorks LLC of Portland, Ore. “We see our […]

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Functional and fanciful fabric sculptures embrace Google building

January 1st, 2024

When Google’s Bay View campus opened in Mountain View, Calif., last year, employees entering the largest building were greeted by sculptural fabric elements, Eddy and Shroud, designed by Jenny Sabin Studio. They stand tall in the open courtyard area, where there are collaboration spaces and cafes. The second floor contains employees’ individual workspaces. Eddy is […]

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Structured symbolism: ‘Wings over Stinson’ custom architecture

January 1st, 2020

International Tension Structures lifts a community’s sense of pride, one 50-foot, membrane-wrapped steel wing at a time. By Holly Eamon Architecture without a definitive function is not an easy sell. But it’s rarely a regret. “The concept is hard for people to digest, especially early on in a project,” says Jacob Schwartz, director of engineering […]

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Beyond the rectangle

December 1st, 2015

Fabric structure manufacturers are stretching their boundaries with new shapes and flexible materials for temporary structures for events. Consider, if you will, the Pythagoreans, who dissected a sphere as early as 600 B.C. Latecomers like Plato and Buckminster Fuller took the ball and ran with it, so to speak. But in 2015, Platonic polyhedral/geodesic domes […]

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