New hybrids – from textile logics towards tailored material behaviour

ABSTRACT

Today’s challenges in Architecture and Engineering arise from ever more complex networks of boundary conditions, which often address contradicting environmental, social and economic aspects. Within this context, finding a single best solution for a construction type or planning method to solve these challenges, is often not possible. In pursuit of efficient solutions for both digital modelling and actual construction, we are discovering new hybrids as forerunners of our creative profession. In this context, we are also discovering new fields of application for textile architecture for both products and planning techniques beyond their classic application for membrane structures. The current paper on ‘new hybrids’ will address this potential and show new fields of application, where knowledge from textile architecture is the starting point for developing new design and construction methods, using traditional building materials. The current paper reviews some recent developments of design and construction principals in textile architecture and gives an outlook, towards how these can be transferred, onto the development of a new filament-based timber material.

KEYWORDS:

• Architecture
• digital design
• form-active
• bending-active textile membrane hybrids
• timber structures
• simulation and fabrication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).