Supporting Sustainable Design with Fabric Structures
With Sustainable Design as the most important issue in architecture today, Fabritecture is not only focusing on environmentally friendly materials but also educating their clients on the benefits of their design approach, their use of materials and their method of construction for reaching “Green” status whilst Supporting Sustainable Design with Fabric Structure.
By using simple building solutions to reduce energy consumption and materials with recycled composites Fabritecture embrace a greener environment. The essential aim of Sustainable Design is to produce places, products and services in a way that reduces the use of non-renewable resources, minimizes environmental impact, and relates people to the natural environment. Architectural Fabric Structures have been in use since first introduced in the early 1960′s for temporary expositions. The major benefits were its minimal impact on the environment, its ability to enclose large spaces with little material and, of course, its aesthetic quality. Essentially, these early structures were fine examples of Sustainable Design. Over time, these structures have proven themselves as a permanent building material having been used in retail malls, airports, sports facilities and schools to name a few.
When it comes to fabric structures three major components in sustainable design are Design, Materials and Construction.
Design
Benefits of fabric structures include: natural lighting during the day which reduces the need for artificial lighting, UV protection which reduces the risk of skin cancer, water collection which is then used for irrigating plants and other services, solar shading which reduces energy on a building’s mechanical system whic is rarely considered but is a growing trend of incorporating a fabric structure as an educational tool that teaches people about UV protection, recyclability, etc.
Materials
Designers look to the three basic components: the structural members, the membrane and the perimeter tensioning system. The structural system is primarily made of steel but aluminum and wood are being considered more often. These materials all have many recyclable attributes and can be specified to be manufactured locally to the site. Depending on the membrane chosen, some materials have short life spans while others are made of recyclable materials. You can also find materials with 20 to 30 year life spans and are more environmentally friendly than ever before.
Ferrari have developed the Texyloop technology specifically for recycling of composite PVC membranes and textiles. In November 2008 Fabritecture dismantled a structure in Canberra and returned it to Europe for recycling using Texyloop. Case Study
Construction
Most tensioned fabric structures are designed, engineered and fabricated by “form finding” which means they are designed to be not only structurally efficient but manufactured and installed with little to no waste and energy. Architectural fabric is considered one of the lightest building materials and can create the largest building envelope. The result can have significant impact from manufacture to site due to the lighter weight of the membrane, structural steel and components, the entire structural system can be shipped to site with fewer trucks and erected with less equipment. Properly designed fabric structures may have little impact on the ground with smaller concrete foundations for compression loads and the use of utility cable anchor technology for tension loads. These efforts can have significant saving when the site is being used for temporary structures or deployable structures where reuse is inevitable.