Week 8

Fitting Fashion to Form

A Study of Pleating or 'Clothing' Architecture

The shell/enclosure of the Taichung Convention Center by MAD was designed as a a pleated skin consisting of concrete and glass.

Pleats are made by folding a material and fastening or pressing to hold the shape of the pleat.
A woven material (a pleated skirt) or a stiff material (a paper fan) contracts and expands longitudinally (with the pleats) easily, retaining the integrity of the pleats.

But attempting to bend across the pleats causes kinking and the integrity of the pleats is lost.

Pleats made with these materials (woven, stiff) are linear, create their own form, and are suited to octogonal surfaces.





 Pleated Wedding Chapel By Hironaka Ogawa

A pleated knit material has more flexibility, contracting and expanding longitudinally as well as bending and draping to conform to curvilinear (body) forms.










                                                                 Shell-knit coat by Issey Miyake




Pleats can be created and morphed in a variety of patterns for interesting textures and forms. The Taichung pleated form looks like the pleated skirt of the woven material and would be made of a stiff material (concrete, glass) but acts like the shell-knit pleated coat - conforming to the curvilinear structural form.  The designers used pleat variations to create a skin that appears to stretch while conforming to the constraints of pleats.

Interesting forms can be explored with paper folding.  Advanced origami techniques and the geometry of straight lines can be used to achieve curvilinear forms with stiff material and linear pleats.

 

At this point it is time to put fashion aside and move on to other ways to look at 'wearing' a building.

Week 7

Architecture Influenced by Fashion

Fashion can influence the form of architecture.  Buildings can be pleated/folded, woven, draped, etc.

The Taichung Convention Center design by MAD is an example of a pleated building. 

"This project is conceived as a continuous weave of architecture and landscape, a futuristic vision based on a naturalistic spirit." " The project’s billowing skin is a high-tech, eco-friendly pleated skin system.  The envelope provides enough air flow through the building to naturally ventilate the spaces, and the pleating integrates a double photovoltaic glass that will reduce energy consumption levels.  The materiality of the “eco-skin” changes as one side is transparent to allow light to penetrate the interiors, while the other side is solid." (MAD)


Clothing/textile terms are used to describe the design and pleating influenced the forms, flexible skin, and interior space.  Issey Miyake's Shell Knit Coat inspired the pleating and the way the pleats are varied to drape the skin over the mountain forms and blend into the surrounding landscape.

 The buildings look like accordion pleated skirts....

 ....and the pleating of oriental fans (a fashion accessory) and paper folding both of which also cultural.












The Kukje Gallery by SO-IL is an example of a draped, or veiled, building.

Considering the diagrammatic box geometry too rigid within the historic fabric, SO–IL enveloped the building in a mesh veil, creating a nebulous exterior that changes appearance as visitors move through the site. Chainmail is rigid, as it is made out of metal, and it has a fabric-like flexibility, due to the way the rings interlink. These combined qualities offer the possibility to create a strong skin that can adapt itself to the contour of any individual body and shape. (SO-IL)

Clothing/textile terms are also used to describe this building and the choice of draping material was based on ancient chain mail armor and its ability to drape to the contours of the wearers body.  It also functions as a veil creating an softened/ambiguous boundary and space between the material and the shapes of the building.

Fashion inspired by architecture.  The influence goes the other way as well.

  

Week 6

Casual Urban

This week I looked at other types of clothing with qualities of flexible or adaptable space, particularly 'normal' clothing rather than specialty/fashion pieces.  I also looked at ways to apply those qualities or strategies to urban space.  I choose to work with a park to look at ways to adapt open space to changing users,uses, and time by creating new space without changing the ability of the park to function as a whole - no barriers - and without requiring moving or setting up temporary objects.

Jacket

The jacket has tectonic qualities of articulated joints and programs.  The construction of the jacket does not require the seams and pockets to be visible but it adds visual interest as well as highlighting the program spaces (pockets, hood) available for use as needed without changing the jackets use as a whole.





Park

Lines can be drawn, like seams, at ground level to designate areas of the park without changing the use of the park as a larger open space.  The lines can be geometric or sculptural to create visual interest and connections with elements inside and outside the park.









Cargo Pants

Cargo pants generally have large pockets (often several) providing space that can be used as needed.  Some also have zippers, buttons, or ties to change the amount of space being used, depending on how the user needs/wants to wear the pants.  Those elements are hidden until needed but only then are the pants whole.

Park

I applied the 'hidden until needed' strategy to the park by adding lights in the ground that can be turned on to light the boundaries of an area/space for activities at night. 

Week 5

Tectonics and Fashion

Tectonic - the art of joining;
                construction or making of an artisanal or artistic product;
                a complete system binding all the parts into a single whole;
                Greek - carpenter or builder, artisan working in all hard materials except metal, clay.  Making

From Gottfried Semper we can get a basic understanding of tectonics and also his ideas on 'dressing'.

Gottfried Semper believed the origins of architecture were to be found in the basic form of a shelter and from that developed his
Four Elements of Architecture.
     1. hearth
     2. roof  (framework)
     3. enclosure  (screen, lightweight enclosing membrane)
     4. mound  (earthwork - later masonry platform)
The hearth's flame and bodies around it are protected by the other three elements (prosthetics).

From these Gottfried identified
Four Elements of Building (crafts)
     1. ceramic (or metal forge and cast) - soft and mouldable, after
         working able to be hardened and keep shape.
     2. framework (carpentry) - rod-shaped, elastic, strong in tension.
     3. textile - flexible, tough, high resistance to tearing.
     4. masonry - unyielding, dense, strong in compression,
                                                                                    manageable pieces in regular courses.
                       
                                                           Two Fundamental Procedures
                                                                1. tectonics of the frame - lightweight linear components
                                                                    assembled to organize space.
                                                                2. stereotomics of the earthwork - mass and volume formed
                                                                    together through repititious piling up of heavy weight elements.

My focus will be on enclosure and textile.
The original enclosure screen was woven material.  It is interesting that the German (Semper was German) word for wall - wand - has a common root with the word for dress - gewand.

Semper's Stoff-Wechsel (changing material) theory. When one material was substituted (prosthetic) for another it retained a symbolic form of the original material, construction, or culture.
Examples: Stone carved to look like weaving, papyrus or timber frame. 

 

              Masonry brick laid in weave-like courses. 

               Walls painted or carved to look like woven wall hangings.

Semper's Bekleidung (dressing or cladding) theory. Like the screen that defines the space enclosure is separate from the structure, the ornamentation, even on load-bearing masonry, is also symbolically separate.
 "Solid walls are but the internal and unseen scaffolding of the true and legitimate representatives of   division..." Gottfried Semper

Fashion

 Can solidity and fixity be dissolved and 'dressing' used to create dynamic space?
 Can architectural space respond  and adapt to changing uses and users?

In Dagmar Reinhardt's Elastic Space, she discusses how space can be designed to be flexible, adaptable, and responsive.  Through examples of fashion and corresponding architecture she illustrates degrees of spatial change from static to compressed, flexible, and elastic.

Compressed - a core within an area of ambiguity and a boundary.

The little black dress has a close fit to body contours (boundary) and programmatic elements -pockets, inlays, etc. (core) that can not be rearranged.  The ambiguity happens with changing accessories.

Modernist architecture such as the Farnsworth House has a close fitting, efficient form with a fixed program - bath, kitchen, storage at the core.  The open floor plan can be transformed by adding and rearranging furniture and objects.

Model

Flexible - no ambiguity, two or more predictable 'switch' conditions.

The kimono has a generic, rectilinear form and homogenous surface with areas of intensity created with multiple textile layers and accessories. The shape is created/changed by the wearers behavior and posture - moving, standing and sitting position (switches).

The traditional Japanese house is a rectangular module system based on the tatami mat.  The unit boundaries can be altered (switched) by opening and closing screens to change space per occupant, time of day, and use. 

Models of switches changing spaces

Elastic - space is made in unforeseen ways in non-linear dynamic process
               highly responsive to impact of occupant
               experimental and exploratory

Sartorial fashion examples exhibit dynamic change established through oversize, ambiguity, and insertion strategies.  A modified and unexpected physical operation, spatial effect, or body perception is produced.

 Shigeru Ban reframes space in his Wall-less house with a ground-wall hybrid, a universal floor with no specific spaces, and kitchen and bathroom objects unexpectedly left exposed as sculpture.  The user chooses the area to inhabit, the use sequence, and the time frame.
In Naked House, rooms are in boxes on wheels that can be moved where desired, inside or out.

Model examples of flexible and elastic space

Next, I need to look at more precedents (fashion/architecture comparisons), some reverse relationships, and how these spatial strategies can be applied to other scales such as urban or furniture.

Sources

Frampton, Kenneth. Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1995. Print.

Reinhardt, Dagmar. "Elastic Space: Latent Formations In Fashion And Architecture." Architectural Theory Review: Journal Of The Department Of Architecture, The University Of Sydney 12.2 (2007): 181-194. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.

Ungless, Bill. A 'Semperhaus' in Suffolk'. 2000. Web. 30 Sep. 2015.
 

   

Week 4

Common Threads

In looking for a path of interest for me in the previous research on prosthetics and 'wearing architecture', I know at this point that I am not interested in the technology aspect but I did find some common elements, or threads, that are very interesting to me. 

First is the importance of the end user - the examples are made to fit and/or are unique to or personilized 
by the user.
Second is the material - each is composed of a textile/woven material, plate/solid material, or a combination.

 

1. User personalization

My Model:  Nodes, the spaces between nodes, how they are connected, and what happens at the point of connection can be flexible, adaptable, personalized.

2. Material

Textile refers to materials made of complex fiber assemblies and includes a wide spectrum of materials. Textile materials are made by interweaving fibers, creating friction between the fibers and holding the material together. (Cerovic, Textile Architecture)

                                                                  Fiber Assemblies

               Random distribution fibers                                    Basic assembly, wrapping                             Advanced Assembly,
                                                                                                                                                                                      braid, weave, knit 

Textile relation to architecture can be as a metaphor, a building assembly, or as an actual building material. 

An example of textile metaphor used as a design concept to create formis Frederick Keisler's design of Endless House and his explanation that the walls were like textile clothes and correlate with the human  body.                

My model: Curvilinear 'textile walls' create space, open to outside space, with a skin which can be draped, folded, compressed, stretched, gathered.

Konrad Wachsmann proposed a solution to the great number of bars and connections required for long span structures.  His Experimental Structural Web wove together continual bars (fibers) to create a textile structural assembly for a long span  based on friction rather than jointing.

My models:  Weaving wires to create a spherical dome (flexible in this model).
 

                   Woven grid can be used to organize program elements, fenestrations and envelope, urban fabric

Next steps will involve studying Gottfried Semper and Kenneth Frampton and their works on tectonics and the more on the relationship between and comparison of fashion and architecture.


Sources

Cerovic, Milutin. "Textile Architecture: Exploring The Potential Of Fiber Assemblies And Their Application In Architecture." SAJ: Serbian Architectural Journal 4.3 (2012): 280-297. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

Coates, Nigel. "Skin/Weave/Pattern." Architectural Design 76.6 (2006): 44-49. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.