Architecture Manifesto: What does a thread want? by Shirley_Guo

WHAT DOES A THREAD WANT?

Shirley Ziyun Guo 962735 ABPL90117 Twenty-first century architecture MANIFESTO: WHAT DOES THE THREAD WANT TO BE? Tutor: Dr Jonathan Lovell

CONTENT

INTRODUCTION

THE EVOLVING ARCHITEXTILE

WHAT DOES A THREAD WANT?

LIGHTNESS: DOING MORE WITH LESS

FLEXIBILITY: RESPONDING TO THE CHANGING DESIGN NEEDS

VERSATILITY: WIDE ADAPTATION OF MATERIALS AND FORMS

DECORATION: TRANSPARENCY VS. PATTERN

CONCLUSION

Fig.1. Siegfried Modola, Workers begin the process of wrapping up the Arc De Triomphe monument in silver-blue fabric on, 2021.

INTRODUCTION At the time of writing, Arc de Triomphe, one of the most famous military monuments in Paris is dressed in recyclable polypropylene and red rope, which attracts large number of visitors every day. This idea of dressing initially originated from Christo and Jeanne-Claude, artists who are noted for large-scale environmental installations. Here, we witness the collision of two very different forms of tectonics. We see the heaviness and durability of the original material, stone; which has been covered by the fleeting but potent language of fabric. The notion of dressing, which is used for humans, originated from the concept of ‘Bekleidung’ concluded by Gottfried Semper in the 19th century. It was derived from the idea of enclosure, beginning with the primitive fence woven by branches and grass. In actuality, the relationship between textile and architecture goes far deeper. In his ‘Four Elements of Architecture, he has stated that ‘the first architecture is like this tent, and that part of the first walls were made of fabrics and textiles, and the first joint was the knot’. The origin of architecture tectonics came from textiles, however, this ancient practice has been long forgotten by the modern world. However, there are few groups of people who hold onto the ancient practice and intervention during past centuries with great success. Lots of irreplaceable advantages and potentials are seen from its characteristics to meet the demand of the fast-developing and sustainability-oriented society as well as the future development of architecture. Architecture should engage more with textiles.

THE EVOLVING ARCHITEXTILE Firstly, I have to introduce the term ‘Architextile’ proposed by Mark Garcia in 2006. It focuses on the interrelationship between textile and architectural design in generative concepts, forms, patterns, materials and tectonics. This crossfertilization relationship was evolving in history. After Semper, ‘textile blocks’ was created by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 20th century, which are cast concrete blocks with textile cultural patterns connected together with a lattice of metal rods. The use of the textile patterns gives a thickness to the enclosure and a celebration of its culture. In postmodernism, the textile-like steelglass structures appeared to have a more giant but lighter form, like the Seattle Central Library by OMA and 30 St Mary Axe by GMW Architects. With the aid of digital technologies and innovation in materials, architecture can easily achieve smooth and curvy surfaces. In the late 20th century, the design turned to the textile tectonics methodologies driven period, being a revival of Otto’s experiment and computational analogues. An example can be ‘Paris Brain’ by Lars Spuybroek, an experimental physical model made to help imitate the reorganization and rearrangement of the city as a living organism. Past practices reflect a multidimensional collaboration between textile and architecture, which are evidenced to be successful and valuable. Then how will textile benefit our new society?

WHAT DOES A THREAD WANT? We need to think about these questions: What past routes can we continue exploring? What are the other potentials that are waiting to be revealed? From Louis Kahn, we learned to honour the material by asking what does it want. So, what does a thread want? A thread wants to weave, wants to bundle, interlace, braid, knit… It likes lightness, flexibility, versatility, decoration…

LIGHTNESS: DOING MORE WITH LESS

Fig.2. “ Experimenting with Soap Bubbles,” Frei Otto, Soap Bubble Experiment, 1961. Fig.3. Munich Olympic Stadium, unkown, 1972.

Architextile with its lightness, thinness, opacity and transparency holds a notion of minimalism and dematerialisation. It contributes to an environmentally-friendly and sustainable design, which suits the current pace of city development. The idea firstly emerged from Frei Otto during his exploration of lightweight construction in the mid-20th century. In his soap bubble experiment, he managed to find the minimum surface to hold maximum volume. He realized that the structure is determined by cable nets attached or by internal pre-stressing. Inspired by that, his invention of the cable nets was developed and widely spread as a minimalist structural system in the late 20th century. In the Munich Olympic Stadium, he took advantage of the large spanning potential of the steel cables accompanied by the translucent acrylic panels to provide a floating and tent-like roof. His principle is to ‘do more with less. This new simplistic structure with its structural efficiency reduces the need for conventional heavy support. After Otto, the invention of the doublecable net roof in London Velodrome has been proved to have a light carbon footprint and is weathertight and insulated. The total roof weight including all the metal structural elements is only 30kg/m2, which is half that of the Beijing Olympic stadium. Otto was not able to do the calculations, but he communicated with the thread directly through scientific experiments. The thread showed him that it required lightness and minimalism.

FLEXIBILITY: RESPONDING TO THE CHANGING DESIGN NEEDS

Fig.4. KnitCandela, Zaha Hadid Architects, 2018.

With a small impact on the environment, the textile architecture concurrently has its construction efficiency, flexibility, fluidity and adaptability to respond to modern society’s fast-developing speed and consumer demands when conventional architecture is too slow to catch up with the rapid changes. Fast economic development imposes great pressure on the architecture production cycle. With the assistance of digital technologies, architextile holds a solution to this crisis. KnitCandela, a double-curved concrete shell pavilion was designed and built by Zaha Hadid Architects and ETH Zurich, with a new 3D-knitted textile technology as formwork. The whole process includes suspending the double-layered fabric on a wooden frame, inserting 1000 inflated balloons to hold the shape, and finally spraying concrete to provide rigidity. As Mariana Popescu stated that the whole design to construction process only took 3 and half months. 2 miles of yarn was knitted into strips between 15 and 26 meters in 36 hours with digital fabrication techniques. The total weight of the fabric formwork is only 25kg, and the cable net to suspend formwork 30kg, and the thin concrete shell 5t. Thanks to the elasticity, foldability and flexibility of the fabric formwork, it is easily transportable and buildable, which saves the cost and time on the conventional moulds and formwork. In this case, the design-to-construction system is compacted. When designing, architects are also playing with formwork and its construction process.

Fig.5. Eggersmann Küchen, FACID, 2019.

Other than formwork, connecting new and old is another common and complicated problem in architecture. In the renovation of Eggersmann Küchen, FACID company simply solved the problem by covering the old building structures and windows with a modular flexible textile mesh façade which is similar to the aluminium cladding façade of the new building. The idea of covering the old to match the new saves on time and cost of demolishing and rebuilding. Most importantly, it retains the original value of the old. Architextile is minimal and powerful. It holds the ability to respond to changeable problems and counter changes with its flexibility.

VERSATILITY: WIDE ADAPTATION OF MATERIALS AND FORMS

Fig.6. Bamboo Roofing, Shigeru Ban Architects, 2002. Fig.7. Moma Paper Arch, Shigeru Ban Architects, 2000.

Architextile’s adaptability in this fastdeveloping society is also reflected in its versatility, different forms can be achieved with a wide choice of material. The early concept derives from Semper’s Stoffwechselthese, meaning the transformation of materials. The textile can inhabit a wide range of natural materials such as peat, silicon, urine, bamboo, crab shells. An example can be the two roofing structures by Shigeru Ban, one with bamboo and the other with paper tubes. The bamboo roofing is created by grid interlocking systems with each of them consisting of four bamboo strips and four bolting connections. However, the Moma Paper Arch is made of paper tubes laying similar to beam and purlin structures. They are tied together by steel cables. A similar curvy language and patterned style are presented by different materials. The material tectonics are expressed through joint design.

Fig.8. Komatsu Seiren, Kengo Kuma, 2016. Fig.9. Hotel Habitat, Enric Ruiz Geli, Max Zinnecker with James Clar, 2007.

Also, architextile is adaptable to material innovations, including carbon fibres aramids, liquid crystal polymers that have good qualities and performance under extreme forces . A good application is the carbon fibre rod, said to be ten times stronger than iron, attached to the façade of an office building in Japan as reinforcement to prevent earthquakes. This giant curtain of cables with its flexibility and tensile strength pulls the building in the opposite direction when the building is shaking in the horizontal plane. The new forms are created responding to its function. In the Hotel Habitat, a stainless-steel mesh embedded with photovoltaic cell, battery and LED light covers the concrete structure to create an artificial light cloud effect. The mesh with PV cells becomes an innovative textile skin. Without the manual control of the light, the skin can absorb and release energy itself, becoming a self-performing architecture. Architextile has its strong adaptability to accommodate and combine varying ideas and elements to generate new forms and functions.

DECORATION: TRANSPARENCY VS. PATTERN

Fig.10. Shanghai Liuli China Museum, Chang Yi & Yang Hui Shan, 2006. Fig.11. National Library of France, Dominique Perrault, 1989.

Due to the versatility of architextile, its means of decoration also varies. Tracing back to the notion of decoration in textile, embroidery has a significant status. In embroidery, a new thread is sewed onto a piece of cloth for decorative purposes. Such an add-on idea can be seen in the Shanghai Liuli China Museum with a metal mesh folded into a large flower shape fixed to the glass curtain facade. However, due to the unique lightness and transparency characteristics of architextile, the material itself is an aesthetic. An example can be the National Library of France, a metal mesh façade blurs the idea of volume and void, enclosure and exposure, giving a hazy, obscure and fleeting aesthetic.

Fig.12. House in the village of Tishkovo, Podmoskovie, Alexei Kozyr & Ilya Babak, 2021. Fig.13. KU 13 Sneakerlabor, Ankner Buchholz Architekten, 2018.

The interesting part of the decoration in architextile is that the aesthetic is usually contributed by the integrated result of weaving all the materials together. The simplest decorative form can be a weaving pattern. Here, decoration reflects tectonics, or in other words, tectonics itself becomes decoration. A corresponding case is the ‘basket-weave’ façade of the House in the village of Tishkovo. The Wickerwork façade conceals the things inside and at the same time allows light to come in. The transparency and the weaving tectonics work together to give a soft and modest enclosure. The pattern and transparency are usually represented in modularity and repetition; however, the emergence of printable industrial canvas breaks this stereotype and allows the façade an ease to be efficientlycustomized and informative. An example can be KU 13 Sneakerlabor in German. Its decorative effect is an integrated outcome of the interior lighting and the canvas design. The aesthetic of architextile ranges from transparent and soft language to heavily and three-dimensionally-patterned expression. Most importantly, architextile tectonic itself is an aesthetic that is worthy of appreciation.

CONCLUSION Overall, it is evidenced that textile has had an influence on architecture from the ancient times. From the theoretical idea of ‘enclosure’ to the tectonic idea of weaving and knitting, this soft construction with its lightness and structural efficiency has benefited architecture in various aspects of the centuries past. The notion of heaviness and everlasting is no longer the mainstream in the concurrent society. Lightness, flexibility, versatility and decoration, these four characteristics of architextile meet the demand of today’s fast-developing society and sustainability. Its lightness and flexibility contribute to portability, minimalism and simplism with saved time and cost. Its versatility facilitates the innovation of material, forms and functions. The wide range of decoration effects meets the public’s various tastes. The unreplaceable advantages of architextile need our attention to be further explored and developed. Theories and methodologies provided by the pioneers are also a valuable compass for us. With Semper’s idea of ‘material transformation’, we are able to uncover new alternatives and make applications from other areas. From Otto’s scientific experiment, we learned to ask and test ideas from nature. I encourage people with different backgrounds to explore new methodologies to graft between the two areas. By delineating the boundaries between the two disciplines, further organic crossfertilization will occur within architextile, keeping pace with or even leading fastdeveloping societies of present.