2. Curtains, curtain walls and technical skins Do the techniques belonging to sewing inspire certain architects in their buildings? From a technical perspective, sewing is a craft which uses fabric, cut to a pattern, to cover a structure, a body, a window, a piece of furniture. The technical idea of sewing opens a discussion of lightweight flexible materials, cut to cover the skeleton of a building. An example here is Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, a building with an irregular armature covered with a thin metal cladding. This construction became possible when the office borrowed designers and design software from the aerospace industry. Although aerospace work covers an armature with a perfectly fitting skin, these techniques are not quite sewing. The development of the curtain wall, named after a sewn entity, certainly had huge implications for the freeing of the plan and ultimately, the freeing of architectural space. Diaphanous skins of metal, glass and fabric in buildings provided unprec- edented realizations of transparency and translucency, even allowing buildings to breathe. Building materials continue to undergo architects’ experimentation to make them imitate fabric — the classical construction of drapery in stone begun by the Greeks and Romans, reinstated in the Renaissance and continued by sculptors in the nineteenth century continues. The exquisite plywood file cabinet doors (below) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design by Office dA both mimic and re-present drapery in yet another material., this time using computer technology to make a wooden curtain. These examples contribute to the tailoring of buildings, making them more fashion- able and new. But do they really connect architecture with sewing? Although the Guggenheim Museum borrows its technology and CATIA software from the aerospace industry, it does illustrate a homologous relationship between the covering of an organic building skeleton with a skin and the covering of a human body with sewn fabric. While Gehry says, ingenuously, that he barely knows how to turn on a computer, he claims that the cameleon-like skin at Bilbao came about because he had a sample of the titanium cladding material in his office and was fascinated by its luminosity. 1 When he took the cladding sample outside, it changed from silver to gold depending on sun angles and rain. This kind of fascination with beautiful materials tempers the discussions of technologically challenging buildings — transparency, translucence and texture are terms familiar to sewers, tailors and fashion designers. Several recent publications illuminate the conceptual, technical and artistic obses- sions with the fabric of building surfaces. A conference at the University of Texas at Austin called Skins explored all aspects of the skins of buildings. Skin: Surface, Substance and Design covers padding and protection, warps and folds, horror and biotechnology, artificial light and artificial life. 2 More technical aspects are discussed in Christian Schittich’s book In Detail: Building Skins: Concepts, Planning, Construction . 3 Do any of these discourses grounded in architecture and technology pay homage to the humble art of sewing? If so, such relationships are only loosely basted.
Ask her what she makes— reflections on architecture and sewing Jill Bambury
1. Being in Rome I was in Rome when I heard about this topic, architecture and sewing. Rome is one of the haute couture capitals of the world, where ever-fleeting fashions are photographed against timeless classical and Renaissance buildings. Medieval ground floor shops in these buildings are often occupied by tailors who work on a single sewing machine, doors open, upholstering, tailoring and mending clothes. Scaffolding abounds in the historic centre of the city, accommodating restoration workers. It moves periodically from building to building, poetically transforming each with a translucent veil of green mesh. The mesh is literally stitched into place; lines are looped through grommeted holes in the fabric and threaded around a steel and wood armature. In the past few years some of the more loosely woven scaffold fabrics have been replaced with a fabric of finer grain and less transparency, stretched tautly over the scaffold and printed with advertisements. These match the scale of the buildings of Rome — gorgeous human specimens sip elixirs, wearing beautiful garments, theatrically lit at night. When I came across a block-long exquisite white tent my first thought was that Roman scaffolding really is an art form. Closer, the billboard indicated that this tent veiled the construction site for Richard Meier’s New Roman Church. This scaffold and wrapping was classic Meier.
1 The interview was aired on CBC’s Midday when Gehry came to Canada to receive the RAIC Gold Medal in 1998. 2 Lupton, Ellen with Jennifer Tobias, Alicia Imperiale and Grace Jeffers. Skin: Surface, Substance and Design . New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. 3 Schittich, Christian. In Detail: Building Skins: Concepts, Planning, Construction . Munich: Birkhauser Edition Detail, 2001.
Bundled scaffold sheathing: semi transparent, green, grommetted. Rome, 2002.
The Lazlo Files, Graduate School of Design at Harvard, by Office dA.
42
O n S ite review
S ewing
I ssue 8 2002
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator