Books, books, books, books!
It’s that time of year when many publications review the year’s most interesting books, and Fabric Architecture is no exception. Here are four books worth reading that recently came across my...
View ArticleMoney talks
No matter how you say it, the cost of something always plays a big role in the total scheme of things. Our January 2011 issue theme, how to estimate the cost of awnings and canopies (“Show me the...
View ArticleIts time to lighten up
Out of frustration with the local (Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, USA) NFL sports franchise — the Minnesota Vikings football team and its owners — for their persistent and annual demands of tax...
View ArticleJapanese architect Shigeru Ban comes to aid of people
Design materials genius Shigeru Ban has developed disaster aid shelters in the past using inexpensive materials like cardboard tubes and fabric. He’s doing it again to help families and victims of the...
View ArticleThe future is now!
Get your votes for your favorite prediction in before tomorrow arrives. How many times have you read headlines that shout at you that the future has arrived sooner than we thought? It wouldn’t have...
View ArticleTents are from Mars, caves are from
Why is it that people cannot get past the concept of fabric structures as permanent or durable structures? Why is it that when NASA or another space exploration-focused design group proposes inflatable...
View ArticleSpace! The next frontier?
Who would guess that spacesuits and architecture have anything in common? You could not be faulted if the above headline caused some confusion. After all, architecture is a technology of ground...
View ArticleHere today, gone tomorrow?
I have often written about the advantages of temporary structures in Fabric Architecture magazine, and several recent announcements about new designs only serve to underscore this notion. In May, the...
View ArticleThe opposite of transparent
Internationally acclaimed Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s design for the annual summer Serpentine Pavilion is now complete, and it could not be farther from the usual lightness and folly-inspired...
View ArticleYes, but is it fabric?
Look closely at the picture; the mesh is made of stainless steel. Would you normally consider this a fabric? Some in our industry would not because the base “fiber” is not one of the traditionally...
View ArticleKapoor and Isozaki = red mobile concert hall
When it comes to art installations by British artist Anish Kapoor, you can be sure that it will be created in his signature blood-red color. True enough, a recent collaboration between Kapoor and...
View ArticleOn regenerative landscapes
Can specialty fabrics really help heal the earth? There’s a lot of hype these days about saving the environment, promoting species diversity and slowing global warming. “Regenerative” or “restorative”...
View ArticleInnovative from the start
A team of students from SCI-Arc and Caltech push the envelope (literally) for a solar house prototype In the interest of driving innovation toward highly efficient housing designs, the U.S. Department...
View ArticleGreen grows the optimization
Concepts like net-zero building or low carbon footprint are leading design today, so it was only a matter of time before the Olympic Games jumped on the bandwagon. Given the number of post-Olympics...
View ArticleNew for 2012
Updating the magazine is the chance to rethink, improve The design and editorial direction of Fabric Architecture magazine has remained consistent—with minor tweaks and updates—for more than 10 years....
View ArticleThe Serpent(ine) in the Garden
Internationally acclaimed architects Herzog & de Meuron and equally distinguished Chinese artist Ai Weiwei have been chosen as the design team for the 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. The annual...
View ArticleGet smart!
Designing intelligent (dynamic) architecture. When I was a teen, the hippest show on television was “Get Smart,” a parody of the secret agent genre starring the inimitable Don Adams as Maxwell Smart....
View ArticleGo team!
For fabric architecture, the architect-fabricator dynamic can make a huge difference in outcome. Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success. –Henry Ford...
View ArticleTriple-X: The London 2012 Olympics fabric structures under the microscope
While the world directs its attention to the athletes that are competing in the Games of the XXX Olympiad occurring right now in London, for the past four years fabric structure architects and...
View ArticleThe worth of a sun, water
“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” —Benjamin Franklin With six months’ of higher than average temperatures this year and a 10-year record drought in many parts of North America,...
View ArticleParametric Kreod Pavilion, London
It is pleasing to see that more and more architects and designers are discovering the aesthetic pleasure and practicality of fabric as a building material. But I do wish they would acknowledge how...
View ArticleIts a material world after all
Recent studies have shown that people are rediscovering craft and handmade things. When it comes to choosing between a million-made manufactured object versus a one-off (or short run) object, people...
View ArticleInner workings
Still waters run deep, the saying goes. There’s more beneath the surface than meets the eye, goes another. Any way you look at it, designing tensioned fabric interiors is no simple matter, and the...
View ArticleBlue, Wendy blue
Last year, FA reported on the fabric-based pavilion design by HWKN for the Museum of Modern Arts’ (MoMA) annual invitational Young Architects Program. The New York, N.Y.-based designers’ project,...
View ArticleDigitals origins in textiles
We’ve come full circle. Some of the earliest evidence of human technology is of woven cloth, dating from more than 100,000 years ago. According to archaeologists, the first human-made structures were...
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