Architecture + Textiles =

ArchitextilesA hybrid term, ‘architextiles’ encompasses a wide range of projects and ways of thinking thatunite architecture and textiles. By way of introduction to this issue, guest-editor Mark Garciahighlights the significant rise of interest in this confluence by theorists, architects, engineers,textile designers, materials scientists and artists. He also explains how, as a hybrid mode ofdesign and practice, architextiles is better able to respond to society’s fast-changing culturaland consumer demands, enabling the production of more dynamic, flexible, interactive, eventand process-based spaces.

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Introduction

Mina Tent City, Saudi Arabia, 1997This vast permanent city of 57,000 PTFE-coated fibreglass, air-conditioned tents was built to accommodate 1.5 millionHajj pilgrims. The city is divided up into ‘countries’, with flags representing the nationality of each section.

A new generation of giant-scale textiles is at the core of a revolutionin architecture.

S Hanna and PA Beasley1

According to Kurt Forster, art and architecture firstintersected when man learned to fasten a textile to a post.2

Closer to our own times, the first marks made by man on thesurface of Mars were imprints of the textile landing airbagsdeployed by the NASA Pathfinder mission in 1997–98. Thesetwo events mark extreme poles of a continuous history ofintimate exchange between architecture3 and textile design.Between these two events is a long and largely unchartedhistory of productive multidisciplinary cross-fertilisations andresearch, and recent signs suggest that the consiliencebetween architecture and textiles is intensifying.

Significant, recently built examples of this include projectssuch as Murphy Jahn’s Bangkok International Airport (2006),Nicholas Grimshaw’s Space Centre Rocket Tower in Leicester(2001) and Richard Rogers’ Millennium Dome, London (1999).In addition, the popularity and appearance in quick successionof books like Bradley Quinn’s The Fashion of Architecture4 andMarie O’Mahony and Sarah Braddock Clarke’s Techno Textiles,5

and exhibitions such as ‘Extreme Textiles’ at the Cooper-Hewitt, New York (2005) and ‘Skin and Bones’ at the Museumof Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2006–07), are symptomaticof the growing importance of what Lars Spuybroek hasdescribed as a ‘textile way of thinking’ in architecture. Thisway of thinking and making has a long and winding, butlargely neglected history that has only recently witnessed asignificant rise in interest from theorists, architects,engineers, textile designers, materials scientists and artists. Itshistory is sewn into our everyday language.

Etymologies and Definitions of Architextiles The etymological link is explicit. ‘Textile’, ‘technology’, ‘text’,‘texture’, ‘connection’ and ‘context’ are all derivativeinflections of the same proto-Indo-European word ‘tek’, whichis the root of ‘architecture’. ‘Technology’ and ‘textile’ are alsoboth derived from the Latin ‘texere’, meaning to weave,connect and/or construct. ‘Fabric’ has its origins in the Latin‘fabricare’, or ‘fabre’, meaning to work, or to make.Architectural parlance contains more examples, such asurban fabric, curtain wall, ribbon window and sail vault. Butas well as being related linguistically and conceptually,

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Frank Gehry, Astor Place Hotel, Manhattan, New York (1998) and Lewis Residence (1995) Though unrealised, the physical models of the tower of the Astor Place Hotel in Manhattan (made using panels of felt) andthe Lewis Residence (the central red volume is made with a stiffened velvet) prefigure the dynamic and seemingly casualforms of Gehry’s later built works, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

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architecture and textiles are also linked via researchprogrammes. A hybrid of ‘architectures’ and ‘textiles’, theword ‘architextiles’ refers to this body of projects and theways of thinking and making that join the two.

This hybrid body of work is structured by two linked andconverging flows of ideas, two processes of interdisciplinarytransmutation that are occurring within and through themeshing of the two disciplines. The increasing‘architecturalisation’ of textiles and the increasing‘textilisation’ of architecture are, more simply, architecturalways of thinking and doing in textile design, and a textile wayof thinking and doing architecture.

Overall, this issue of AD uses a broad definition of ‘textiles’and therefore brings nonwovens, membranes, meshes,agglomerations of fibres, fabric composites and other hybridswithin the scope of its interest, stretching the notion of afabric/textile and helping to open up existing and newterritories of research. It also expands the scope andpossibilities for design and encourages a more exhaustive andrigorous challenging of the conventional categories andconcepts of both architecture and textiles.

On the surface, there are clear and importantcommonalities and differences between architecture andtextiles – as practices, products, forms of materiality and as

ONL, NSA Muscle installation, ‘Non-Standard Architecture’ exhibition, Pompidou Centre, Paris, 2003The NSA Muscle is a pressurised, soft volume wrapped in a mesh of tensile Festo muscles that can change their ownlength. Orchestrated motions of the individual muscles change the length, height, width and, thus, the overall shape ofthe Muscle prototype by varying the pressure pumped into the 94 swarming muscles. The balanced pressure–tensioncombination bends and tapers in all directions.

bodies of knowledge. Comparative analyses of thein/excursions between disciplines offer unique insights intothem. Within the mélange of disciplinary meshworks, atcertain historical periods some meshworks become morefertile for a discipline than others. While many ofarchitecture’s current skirmishes with other disciplines arealready well articulated, architecture’s meshing with textiles,though arguably significant, is yet to become so.

Types of ArchitextilesThe architextiles meshwork emerges across four looselyinterlaced dimensions, each of which reflects anddistinguishes the most significant points of interference andtransaction within the meshwork. Some architects andprojects operate across all four dimensions, or combinationsof one, two or three. In some projects the dimensions aredirectly related, in others they remain discrete andunconnected. The first way in which architecture engageswith textiles is when an architect uses a metaphor fromtextiles or textile-based processes in architecture, for examplewhen a space is described as being woven or knitted. Thesecond is when a textile-like spatial structure or form isproduced in architecture, such as when forms are designed asskirts, veils, curtains and so on. The third way is when textilesor textile hybrids and composites are used in the actualconstruction or materialisation of architecture. And lastly,when architecture engages with textiles through texts such asin fictional and theoretical writings.

Drivers of Architextiles Theoretical, materials science, engineering, technological,economic and sociocultural developments are the key driversbehind the expansion of the Architextiles body of work. Late(1988 to the present) Postmodern theories of space6 aredominated by a dynamic, interactive, flexible, event- andprocess-based paradigm of space and articulate various aspects

of the new metaphysical and ontological characterisation ofarchitectural space. In contrast to the historical paradigms ofarchitectural space that privileged the Vitruvian concept offirmitas, the new paradigm is critical of such emphasis on anarchitecture dominated by permanent, durable, hard,compression-based structural systems and instead promotesarchitecture that is never finished, never static, but in acontinuous state of becoming, provisional in its transitionalnature. This proposes that architectural space shouldreorientate itself, both metaphorically and literally, from amodel based on the solid to one based on liquid and gaseousenergy-states of matter. In the transition stage from the solidto the liquid, the material and energetic state of textiles, withtheir common properties of surface continuities, lightness,softness, flexibility, thinness and fluid-like dynamism, makethem an apt material group for the expression and realisationof this new spatiotheoretical paradigm.

Textile Materials ScienceThe increasing prominence of textiles in architecture is alsothe result of innovations in materials science and technology.Today’s high-performance textiles are, as the ‘ExtremeTextiles’ exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York,in 2005 demonstrated, at the forefront of a quiet material,design and engineering revolution. New materialstechnologies, driven by advances in biotechnology,nanotechnology, electronics, 3-D weaving, biomimetics andshape memory alloys, offer extraordinary properties, enablingfaster, lighter, safer, stronger and smarter high-performancetechnical textiles that are increasingly finding newapplications in sectors such as medicine, sports, agriculture,transportation, defence, aerospace and leisure. Such textilesalso enable the realisation of new types of material functionsimpossible to achieve with other material groups. Forexample, relatively new materials such as glass, ceramic andcarbon fibres, aramids, liquid crystal polymers, polyphenylenebenzobisoxazoles, PIPDs and high-modulus polyethylenes areable to perform under extreme forces and with a complex mixand range of material qualities. In addition, synergies betweendemands for sustainability and composite, complex andprecise performance specifications are being discovered, andtextiles are now being manufactured from a surprisinglybroad spectrum of raw materials including peat, silicon,urine, soya, nettles, bamboo, crab shells and charcoal.

Today, advanced textile manufacturing processes such asultrasonic welding, laser cutting, advanced digital printing,thermoplastic setting, electrospinning, relief printing andpultrusion are creating remarkable supertextiles. Isotrusses,bio- and nanotextiles, smart and interactive or phase-changetextiles and inks are now able to realise a wide range ofstructural performance and functionality in responsive andinteractive ways. The unprecedented, unpredictable andsometimes counterintuitive range of properties of such super-textiles means they are not only substitutes for and able tooutperform other, older materials, but are delivering a new

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Dominique Perrault Architecte, Berlin Velodrome and Swimming Pool,Berlin, Germany, 1999The Berlin velodrome is one of the largest fine-gauge externally mesh-skinned buildings in the world.

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form of critical materiality to architecture. Seeminglyintelligent, suggestive of the animate and organic, they areexpanding the category and definition of textiles, dissolvingthe boundaries between textiles and other material groupsand exploding the traditional notions of the very nature ofmaterials per se.

Textile EngineeringPostmodern textiles in built-environment applications alsoextend into large-scale landscaping projects, as well as intoroads, storm rooms, ship hulls and aeroplanes, and inconcrete and exterior building envelopes. For engineers,architects and researchers with more technical and structuralinterests, it is the macroscale tensile, pneumatic andstructural-formal aspects of textiles that have become theirfocus. Every World Expo now sports tensile and pneumaticstructures. In 1980, Progressive Architecture proclaimed tensilestructures a ‘mature building technology’, and today they arean almost ubiquitous component of the urban tissue.Together with tensile structures, pneumatic buildingtechnologies have witnessed a revival with the advent of

CAD/CAM. CAD software such as Testa Architecture’s Weaverand Tensys’ inTENS are specifically designed to model textilearchitecture. The range of design advances in the field ofcomplex pneumatic forms and structures that have resultedfrom CAD/CAM technologies have been demonstrated by RoyalCollege of Art (RCA) graduate Judit Kimpian’s ‘Pneumatrix’PhD research project (2001).

Examples of buildings that have employed suchtechnologies include Inflate’s Unipart and Big M projects, theArchitects of Air Archipelago, the new Beijing 2008 OlympicWatercube swimming pool by PTW Architects, and Grimshaw’sAirquarium and Cutty Sark. Rigidisable structures, such as theAirbeams by Vertigo developed for the US Army Natick SoldierCentre in Massachusetts, are hybrid pneumatic/rigid structuresdeveloped for extreme conditions such as low-gravity andemergency constructions whose stiffness and load-bearingcapacities surpass conventional inflatable and pneumaticstructural performance by many magnitudes.

For researchers, architects and engineers like Phillip Beasley,it is the large-scale, lattice-like, tension-based structure oftextiles that has opened up the largest territories of technical

Robert Hirschfield, ‘En Guard’, RCA Department of Architecture, London, 2005MA Architecture graduate Robert Hirschfield’s proposal for a new temporary high-frequency welded ETFE pillowstructure as a venue for Olympic Fencing on London’s Millennium Bridge. Generating new, sheltered audience space,the form allows live media content to be projected on to the exterior and creates layered and dramatic kinetic andcinematic views over the Thames and across the city.

innovation. Previously only of specialist and peripheralinterest, the significance of tension-based architecture is nowon a par with compression structures. The more flexibleskeletons and structural envelopes of buildings such as Foster’sSt Mary Axe and Koolhaas’s Seattle Public Library are amongthe most advanced versions of these new, more tension-basedgiant textile buildings. For Beasley, such ‘evolving structureshave steadily increased the role of tension forces, replacing thedense masses of compression-based structures of traditionalbuildings with open, more efficient systems.’7

These types of construction systems are particularlyeffective in extreme physical conditions, being able towithstand dynamic loading forces that can result in twisting,torsion, buckling and bending, such as encountered duringearthquakes, wind-directed heavy snow and duringhurricanes. When constructed from lightweight glass andcarbon fibres, especially in composites, the textiles are alsofaster, easier and cheaper to transport, making theconstruction process simpler and more efficient.

Sociocultural and Economic Drivers of ArchitextilesChanges in economics, society and culture have alsocontributed to the demand for architextiles. In parts of citiessuch as Tokyo and LA where buildings are constructed anddemolished rapidly, architecture begins to take on a nomadicstatus. The shifting sites of architectural programmes in theaccelerating cycles of economic global and socioculturalcapitalist production systems leads architects and theoristslike Herzog & de Meuron, Hani Rashid, Rem Koolhaas andother aestheticians of speed to conclude that conventionalarchitecture is too slow to keep up with significant changesin society and culture. For Herzog & de Meuron, fashionpresents a compelling condition for architecture because ‘inthe world of fashion … things move faster than inarchitecture – getting dressed, getting undressed,transforming oneself, giving shape, trying out new sculptural

possibilities, examining the quality of surface texture,inventing a new style, and discarding it again.’8

For architecture to be able, then, to more effectively expressand assimilate the accelerating changes in lifestyle, identityand economics that the contemporary globalised worlddemands, faster modus operandi, more like those deployed infashion and textiles, are necessary. While the computer and itsrelated technologies have compressed the time of the standardarchitectural production cycle, and while architecture, asdesigns (disseminated through photography, magazines, newmedia, films, exhibitions, drawings and models) is able tomatch the speed of other design disciplines, the realisation andmaterialisation of built architecture, as yet, cannot.

Architextiles are particularly well suited for temporary,transportable and ephemeral structures. Such structures arepropelled by the emergence of new building typologies,programmes and functions as well as by the need to producearchitectural solutions able to handle today’s larger and moreintricate process-based functions and programmes. Economicand faster design-cycle pressures impose these new conditionsand situations on architecture and are now fuelling aburgeoning desire for a faster, lighter, smarter, moretransportable, easily de/reconstructed and technologicallyfacilitated architecture. New retail, media, cultural,entertainment, leisure and sports events impose newarchitectural problems to solve in servicing and housing newprogrammes, functions and phenomena. They demand a morefluid, adaptable, interactive, variable, multimedia functionaland dynamic architecture, driving the search for newarchitextile forms and aesthetics. Architextiles and theirparadigmatic affiliations to fashion and textiles now suggest atantalising, though not unproblematic, set of possible solutionsto such new types and scales of architectural problems.

Each of the contributions to this issue of AD9 has beenselected to highlight a unique yet distinct perspective, andtogether they offer a new and representative view on the

Judit Kimpian, ‘Pneumatrix’, RCA Department of Architecture, London, 2001 The 13-metre (43-foot) deployable and flexible theatre for up to 1,000 people was developed after research with leading manufacturersand research centres in Germany, France and the Netherlands. Constructed using automated fabrication systems, such as computer-driven weaving, coating, cutting and welding, it features a soft rib structure that defines the enclosure and can be reconfigured throughthe dynamic shape change occurring in the flexible ‘smart’ webs that span between the ribs and work as dynamic actuators.

significant topics, projects, people, rigour and imaginationinvolved in the innovative meshworking of architecture andtextiles. The issue does not privilege built over unbuilt workor any particular style, aesthetic or architectural position.Rather its aim is to find as many ways as possible to probe thefield and begin to stretch and test its limits. The historicalthreads, the academic and professional contributions, as wellas the futurological, utopian and the more fantasticalspeculations shot through these provide alternative scopes ofthought. As a whole, it attempts to demonstrate that textilespresent an increasingly fascinating and invaluable resourcefor architecture as well as for our complicating cities and forthe humanity they are spinning into the future. 4

Notes1. S Hanna and PA Beasley, ‘A transformed architecture’, in M McQuaid (ed),Extreme Textiles, Thames & Hudson (London), 2005, pp 103–4.2. KW Forster, ‘Pieces for four and more hands’, in P Ursprung (ed), Herzog &de Meuron: Natural History, Lars Muller and Canadian Centre for Architecture(Baden), 2002, p 51. Archaeologists date the first permanent constructionand the earliest evidence of constructed textiles to approximately after the

last Ice Age, around 7,000 years ago, and believe the first building materialswere textiles based on the form of wattle-and-thatch construction, not on acompression-based masonry form. 3. No distinction is made here between the four major spatial designdisciplines of interior design, architecture, urban design and landscapedesign. For brevity they are all referred to as ‘architecture’.4. Bradley Quinn, The Fashion of Architecture, Berg Publishers (Oxford), 2003.5. Sarah Braddock Clarke and Marie O’Mahony, Techno Textiles: RevolutionaryFabrics for Fashion and Design No 2, Thames & Hudson (London), 2005.6. Such as Deleuze’s ‘fold’, Hani Rashid’s ‘fluid architectures’, KaasOosterhuis’s ‘hyperbody’ and ‘e-motive’ architecture, Marcos Novak’s ‘liquidarchitecture’ and related ‘hyper-architectures’ and ‘trans-architectures’.7. Hanna and Beasley, op cit.8. Natural History, op cit, p 26.9. This issue was made possible only with support from Jose and CharoGarcia, Nigel Coates, Fenella Collingridge, Jonathan Goslan, ChristopherFrayling, Clare Johnston, Jane Rendell and the participants in this project fromthe RCA, Bartlett and the AA. Thanks also to Anne Toomey for collaboratingextensively with me on this subject, and to Helen Castle and AD forcommissioning and creating this issue with me.

Text © 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 5 © Empics; p 6 © GehryPartners LLP; pp 7&11 © Professor Ir Kas Oosterhuis; p 8 © WernerHuthmacher; p 9 © Robert Hirschfield; p 10 © Judit Kimpian – ‘Pneumatrix’

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ONL, Textile Growth Monument, Tilburg Textile Museum, the Netherlands, 2005 ONL has here taken the image of the herdgangen (community) as the structuring substance for the imagined network ofsteel beams. The image combines the growth of Tilburg with the flourishing aspect of Tilburg as a textile city. During thenight the movements of the public activate sensors that control LEDs in the open ends of the connected steel beams.Moving through and around the monument, visitors thus create their own choreography of light.