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.