Review
FABRIC[ated]:
Fabric Innovation and Material Responsibility in Architecture
REVIEW
BOOK EDITED BY TOLYA STONOROV
ROUTLEDGE, 2023
May 21, 2024
This review unravels FABRIC[ated]: Fabric Innovation and Material Responsibility in Architecture, edited by Tolya Stonorov. A timely survey of textile applications in architecture, the book positions fabric construction as a promising technology which the architectural profession can embrace in its charge to lower the environmental impacts of building. Synthesizing current discourse around low-carbon building materials and material optimization, the book crystallizes a distinct approach to sustainable design premised on lightness and flexibility.
Stonorov places experimental technical solutions and provocative social propositions in dialogue with the work of leaders in industry and academy. The resulting book structure builds a case that developing climate solutions demands both professional and scholarly discourses. The foreword by Aura Luz Melis, a partner at Amsterdam-based Inside Outside, introduces the reader to the world of textile design before chronicling the firm’s instrumentalization of the curtain as a spatial boundary . In her introduction, Stonorov picks up this thread to define a context of key scholars and practitioners: Hella Jongerius’s weaving, Frei Otto’s lightweight structures, and Thom Mayne’s building skins, among others.
The book grounds its investigation in four foundational chapters which identify fabric architecture’s origins and futures. RISD professor Christopher Bardt defines two distinct histories for fabric architecture, one symbolic and one generative; British designer and researcher Jane Scott connects developments in textile manufacturing and digital tools; Frankfurt-based researcher Timo Carl outlines criteria for the sustainability of tensile structures; and in a chapter on fabric formwork, Norwich University’s Eleanor D’Aponte argues for fabric’s enduring symbolism and expressive space-making.
The heterogeneity of approaches Storonov includes in FABRIC[ated] makes it a key resource for those interested in advancing sustainable design and defining the spatial potentials of new construction systems. Following the foundational chapters, Stonorov collects fourteen case studies, including both well-known projects and many that have escaped widespread publication. Within this group, a selection of projects address fabric as a finished construction material, others explore fabric as formwork, and a third group mines fabric for its cultural associations and symbolic value. A collection of buildings, temporary installations, fabrication technologies, and even pedagogies form an architectural frontier and scholarly landscape which leverages the talent of both giants and up-and-comers.
Several projects focus on the potentials of fabric membranes as building materials. On the research end of the spectrum, Jordanian-Palestinian architect Abeer Seikaly’s Meeting Points draws on Bedouin weaving to create a three-dimensional woven wall prototype; researchers Johanna Beuscher and Claudia Lüling develop fabric and foam composites which allow a 3D textile design to hold its shape; and Jane Scott creates programmable knitting structures which respond to moisture content. Two architecture firms, SO-IL and Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA), each boldly translate fabric into permanent, public building projects. SO-IL’s custom fabrication of a mesh skin for Kukje Gallery is chronicled in an interview with cofounding partner Florian Idenburg. KVA’s Juan Frano Violich discusses the potential for flexible photovoltaic arrays, PTFE-coated glass fiber fabric, and ETFE fabric on building enclosures.
Three case studies trace developments in fabric formwork, including Mark West’s early investigations in geometry and texture, the Block Research Group’s cable net fabric formwork, and Form Found Design’s robotically fabricated MARS pavilion units. The latter two tie back to Scott’s chapter on digital fabrication, which collects projects by a number of leading names in digital fabrication and robotic construction—Sean Ahlquist, the Block Research Group, the Institute for Computational Design and Construction, the Institute for Building Structures and Structural Design, Wes McGee, Tsz Yan Ng, Jenny Sabin, and Zaha Hadid Architects—building incredible momentum at the intersection of digital tools and fabric architecture.
Beyond investigating fabric as material, Stonorov considers fabric’s cultural associations, spatial affordances, and sculptural qualities. While not composed of fabric, Emily Baker’s KESWA, constructed with students at the American University of Sharjah, transforms the cloth abaya into a folded steel enclosure. For her project Pipeline Resistance, Erin Moore wove thatch pavilions that foster multispecies habitation.
Perhaps most encouraging is the inclusion of three pedagogical exercises which introduce the next generation to fabric’s vast potential. In Emily Vogler’s studio GEO | Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design, students crafted fabric elements which register and respond to a riparian landscape. Stonorov’s own Translation: Female Garment to Architecture uses the body as a site for 1:1 prototyping, resulting in fabrics that negotiate the body’s movement. Antje Steinmuller and Mauricio Soto Rubio’s studio at the California College of the Arts, Fabric[ating] Act[ivat]ion, develops a series of discrete deployable tensile pavilions which operate as a unified system.
Across the case studies, fabric design and customization result in programmable, occupiable, three-dimensional fields. In “Field Conditions” (Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City, 1999), Stan Allen posits the field as a spatial organizer defined by continuity and interconnectivity, but also physicality. Fabric offers such a boundless material system with the potential to grow and adapt. Importantly, the book roots its arguments in the material reality of the architectural intervention. Stonorov’s experience as designer and builder are visible in this approach, which centers physical creations, illuminates construction processes, and offers a blueprint for an environmentally conscious future.
Allen, Stan. “Field Conditions.” Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City. Princeton Architectural Press. New York, New York. 1999. 90-103.
Katie MacDonald, AIA, is assistant professor of architecture at the University of Virginia, codirector of the Before Building Laboratory, and cofounder of After Architecture. MacDonald pioneers new biomaterial assemblies, with a current focus on wood, bamboo, grass, and hemp. She creates venues for scholarly exchange, including the Biomaterial Building Exposition.