Archinect - News

SO – IL creates 3D knit textile passage for Bruges Triennial 2024

2024-04-22T11:39:00-04:00

SO – IL has completed a passage of 3D knit textiles as part of the 2024 Bruges Triennial in Belgium.

Titled 'Common Thread,' the passage is inspired by the medieval city’s lace-making tradition, using an innovative woven fabric to create what the team calls an “intricate spatial experience in a wave-like tunnel.”

Image credit: Iwan Baan

The installation is set within a passageway that connects the secluded courtyard of a 19th-century monastery with the wider city. In collaboration with a team from TU Delft, the team explored how Common Thread could marry the tradition of the bobbin lace with modern technologies and new geometric possibilities.

Image credit: Iwan Baan

The resulting fabric is knit in varying ratios, with individual threads combining and diverging in ever-changing patterns. The installation’s form and structural framework were further guided by computational simulations and material samples.

Image credit: Iwan Baan

Image cre...

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama debuts 'Purple Hibiscus' at the Barbican, a reference to the site's material history

2024-04-12T16:33:00-04:00

The Barbican has debuted a new large-scale public art installation from Ghanaian-born artist Ibrahim Mahama.

His site-specific piece Purple Hibiscus, named in reference to the 2003 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is installed on the facade of the Barbican’s central Lakeside Terrace. It uses approximately 21,500 square feet of fuschia-hued cloth that contrasts dramatically with the rough concrete exterior and overcast London sky.

Installation view, 'Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus.' Image: © Dion Barrett / Barbican Centre

Mahama created the piece in collaboration with artisans from his Red Clay Studio and Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in the city of Tamale, Ghana. It references the site's past history as the epicenter of the "rag trade" in Central London before World War II. Together, both the piece and architecture serve as a metaphor for the "power of labor."

Installation view, 'Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus.' Image: © Dion Barrett / Barbican Centre

The artist describes...

all(zone)'s 2022 MPavilion opens to the public featuring an 'ingenious canopy'

2022-12-09T10:52:00-05:00

The 2022 MPavilion has officially opened in Melbourne, Australia. Designed by Thailand-based practice all(zone), the scheme is defined by an “ingenious canopy” comprising three fabric, tensile layers.

The outermost layer of the pavilion’s canopy is built from fishing nets, creating what the team calls a “stunning tactile texture.” The middle layer is formed of an STFE membrane; a weatherproof, anti-glare, transparent material ten times lighter than glass. Finally, the bottom layer is composed of a “waffle” of colored fabric made of 49 individual sections, designed to “move with the breeze and filter light, evoking the feeling of gently resting under trees.”

Photo credit: John Gollings

“Working on the MPavilion project with so many talented individuals has been an incredible journey,” said all(zone) design director Rachaporn Choochuey. “MPavilion is special because even though it’s called a temporary pavilion, it’s actually even more complex than a building. The engineering and manuf...

all(zone) will push new material boundaries in the ninth MPavilion

2022-07-12T12:51:00-04:00

Two months after being named the designer of the prestigious annual MPavilion commission in Melbourne, Australia, Thailand-based practice all(zone) has revealed an experimental concept featuring a mixture of materials and forms they claim are previously unseen in the country's architectural history.

The ninth edition of the pavilion will be displayed prominently in Melbourne's historic Queen Victoria Gardens and query audiences to “think more deeply about different ways of using materials in a sustainable future,” according to a new project announcement.

Image courtesy Naomi Milgrom Foundation.

By incorporating layers of colorful netting and a waterproof mesh membrane produced by the French manufacturer Serge Ferrari, the pavilion’s presence expands on the commission’s legacy of producing cultural incubators that form the basis for critical exchange in the marketplace of ideas. AECOM and the specialist engineering consultancy TENSYS are now working with all(zone) on a construction pr...

Frank Lloyd Wright Textiles on Display at The Met

2019-08-07T11:54:00-04:00

Can architects design wallpaper as arresting as their building facades? In 1955, celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose buildings received UNESCO protected status last month, launched a range of affordable home products for the general public which included a line of fabrics, wallpapers, furniture and paint. An exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York showcases these creations.

Gettin' fleshy with it: "Skin" sculpture is both critique and kinda creepy

2016-10-27T13:12:00-04:00

Oh, functionalism: enough already with the developer-driven efficiency that puts dollars ahead of human livability. Or so goes the critique that underlies the sculpture by NEON known as "Skin," a six-sided grid strung with 1800 pairs of skin-colored tights.

Inadvertently reminiscent of films like "Cube" and "Hellraiser," "Skin" is intended to start conversations about the human dimension in architecture. As a press release elucidates:

"From within the sculpture also imitates the aesthetic of human flesh to create a feeling of immersion with the inhabitant losing all sense of where their body ends and architecture begins. It is intended that this approach will create a strong physical and emotional connection between the inhabitant and the architectural space. This sense of being physically and emotionally present is particularly important in a world where technologies continue to erode our sense of personal space."

For more on innovative fabric-based architecture:

A wrap-up of Vancouver...

Visually Stunning Integrated LED Metal Mesh Transforms Facades

2016-03-28T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by GKD Mediamesh®.

GKD Mediamesh® is a woven stainless steel fabric with integrated LEDs that is used to create a transparent digital display. This unique product is the perfect solution when a digital display is needed on a façade, yet the view through windows needs to be maintained or air flow is required. Mediamesh® evolved from an architectural mesh product woven by GKD. GKD is a German-based Company who began as a weaver of industrial wire cloth in the 1920’s. These products were used in all types of industrial applications from filtration to aggregate screening to conveying. In the early 1990’s, architects began to look at these metal products and think about their potential uses in architecture. This is how architectural mesh was born.

As beautiful as architectural mesh is, customers still wanted more. They wanted to be able to have images, text, and video on these facades. Ag4 Mediatecture Company in Germany understood this and came up with the ide...

David Adjaye talks about woven architecture and his new D.C. museum

2015-07-02T16:00:00-04:00

Adjaye is overseeing the newest installment of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s “Selects” series, which spotlights the little-known West African textiles in the museum’s permanent collection. [...] It also offers the celebrated architect a chance to explore the surprising connections between textile making and building design. “What’s interesting to me is this idea of fabric and weaving as a kind of abstraction of making places that people come together in,” he says.

Stephanie Clark’s embroidered architecture

2015-05-01T13:06:00-04:00

Stephanie K Clark builds homes from swatches of cloth and spools of thread, embroidering tiny dwellings which appear to absorb the sun and moonlight from her small-scale scenes. The structures and their surrounding landscaping appear in vibrant colors while supporting and environment-specific trees, cacti, flamingos, and dogs lay nearby in faint black outlines.

Vinn Patararin challenges the possibilities of textile architecture

2014-11-12T14:42:00-05:00

Vinn Patararin combines the craftsmanship, experience, and interests of multi-disciplinary designers Vinn Chokkhatiwat and Patararin Pongprast. Training separately at prestigious architecture and design schools in Thailand and France followed by working with different Parisian haute couturiers, Chokkhatiwat and Pongprast also incorporate cross-disciplinary theories from sociology, history, art, and culture in their design philosophy.

Vinn Patararin's garments don some seemingly common traits of architecture-meets-fashion pieces — like emphasis on material choice, utilitarian details, pared-down colors, etc. — but the designers add their trademark with their lattice-patterned textile.

Vinn Patararin wanted to create an architecturally structured textile pattern that can adapt to the functional needs and expression of the user. Whether the textile is worn on a human body, used as furniture accents, in art installations, or even applied as a building façade, the designers wanted to chall...

FABRIC's zoetrope-inspired "Trylletromler" pavilion in King's Garden, Copenhagen

2013-11-04T19:27:00-05:00

The "Trylletromler" pavilion by Dutch firm FABRIC has attracted plenty of public attention in King's Garden, Copenhagen since its public opening this past September. The installation was built after FABRIC won a temporary-pavilion design competition earlier this year. (Check out our previous coverage here on our sister site Bustler)

The concept of Trylletromler comes from the Danish word for the 19th-century zoetrope device, which gives the illusion of movement in a still image. Based on this idea, the pavilion's fence is built as a paradoxically transparent maze that creates the illusion of motion as one walks through it.

Here's a more detailed project description and some recent photos we received from FABRIC:

"...The Renaissance garden design of Rosenborg Castle is the oldest known example of garden design in Denmark. The design draws heavily on principles of Euclidean geometry. This language of absolute space was long regarded as the construction principle of the worl...

YAP MAXXI 2013 Installation Completed in Rome

2013-07-02T19:42:00-04:00

bam! bottega di architettura metropolitana recently completed He, the winning installation of the Young Architects Program (YAP) MAXXI 2013 in Rome

Previously on Archinect:

FABRIC Wins Competition for a Temporary Pavilion in the King’s Garden in Copenhagen

2013-05-23T17:04:00-04:00

The entry Trylletromler by Dutch practice FABRIC has won the international design competition for a temporary pavilion in the King's Garden in Copenhagen. The completed pavilion is scheduled to open to the public on September 13.