Light Architecture

By Jan Cremers - 3 November 2011

Aside from glass, a variety of other translucent and transparent materials are equally attractive to architects: plastics, perforated metal plate and meshing. But perhaps most favoured are membrane materials that can also withstand structural loads. Textile materials have long served to protect against the elements such as sun, wind, rain and snow while at the same time, offering the advantage of large spans and a wide variety of shapes. The development of high performance membrane and foil materials based on fluoropolymers, e.g. translucent membrane material such as PTFE (poly tetrafluoroethylene) coated glass fibres or transparent foils made of ETFE (a copolymer of ethylene and tetrafluoroethylene) were milestones in the search for appropriate materials for complex and long lasting building envelopes. The variety of projects of vastly different type and scale shows the potential of these high performance building materials, which in their primordial form are among the oldest available to mankind. Their predecessors, animal skins, were used to construct the very first type of building envelope, namely tents. Since those days, building has become a global challenge. Usually, building structures are highly inflexible but long lasting, and they account for the largest share of global primary energy consumption. It is obvious that the building sector has to develop international strategies and adequate local solutions to deal with this situation. In the last few decades, rapid developments in material production types (e.g. laminates) and surface refinement of membrane materials (e.g. coatings) have been constant stimuli for innovation. As a result, modern membrane technology is a key factor for flexible building shells. An overview on the different options is presented by a broad range of projects using different materials. The outstanding Cape Town Stadium, South Africa uses an open mesh PTFE-coated glass fabric as a textile façade. It demonstrates the...