Architects have gone soft with tough fabrics, tranforming the skyline into a softer, cleaner and greener landscape.
The idea isn’t new – think tents, yurts and teepees – but the technology to super-size fabric-clad buildings is. The material most credited with this dramatic change is ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), a perfectly transparent, self-cleaning plastic. It’s an outstanding insulator, weighs one percent that of glass and can cost up to 70 percent less to install. Three recent projects plan to test the material’s mettle.
When Grimshaw Architects created the simple greenhouse domes of the Eden Project in Cornwall, England in 2001, the project replicated ecosystems from around the world and was intended to act as a test case for future architectural bio-domes. Their latest project, the ambitious 300,000-square-foot Earthpark, expected to open in 2010, will house an environmentally sustainable rainforest ecosystem (complete with macaws, reptiles and piranhas) in the middle of Iowa, using about one-quarter the energy of a conventional building. In designing Earthpark, managing architect Andrew Whalley replicated nature with a rigid trunk structure (doubling as a visitor’s center) supporting a fine branch-like grid, clad in ETFE – its light weight allowing for vast unsupported spans. From the inside, Earthpark will resemble the canopy of a giant transparent willow; from the outside the bulbous, quilted profile will appear as if humans are colonizing the planet from scratch.
Architectural tents like this have the potential to make punishing environments all the more habitable. Take the Khan Shatyry Entertainment Centre, slated for completion later this year in Astana, Kazakhstan – a city where winter temperatures regularly reach minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit. It was designed using ETFE by Foster + Partners with the aim of creating a year-round summer. The 500-foot spire will resemble an inflatable Eiffel Tower, covering an area the size of ten football fields, housing shops, cinemas, a river and indoor beach resort.
But using fabric in architecture requires an especially deft hand. “Visually ETFE is not my favorite design solution,” says Alan Grant of Grant Architects, a Los Angeles-based firm with an expertise in its use. “Most buildings using it in a simple manner end up looking like soap bubbles, but from a performance standpoint, it’s incredible.” He utilized ETFE to solve a vexing design issue in the Lemay – America’s Car Museum, located in Tacoma Washington. The client asked that the cars be lit with natural light. Grant’s team worried the amount of ultraviolet light would reduce the life expectancy of the paint and interior of the cars. His solution? He combined the best of both worlds: He designed a double skin, with an inner layer of ETFE and an exterior skin of [UV resistant] cold bent glass. The layers were separated by three feet and air was pushed through the cavity to create a passive method of preheating and cooling, which greatly reduced the project’s running costs and allowed for increased sunlight without the harmful ultraviolet light. Grant claims that ETFE would be appropriate for just about any new building, “providing,” he adds, “you’re happy with the very strong aesthetic of the material.”
With fabric becoming the fashionable material of architects, tomorrow’s houses may well as be sold with foot pumps and puncture repair kits.
Words by Adam McCulloch. Originally published in Surface Magazine. The format has been altered to suit Tumblr.
