students at bartlett school of arch. create structurally sound fabrick

students at bartlett school of arch. create structurally sound fabrick
all images courtesy of somdatta majumdar

fabric has a long history of serving multiple purposes ranging from furniture, to architecture, to art, etc. in most of those roles though, the material is secondary to another component. by placing fabric at the forefront of a design, exciting possibilities can be found. ‘fabrick’ is a research project undertaken by a student team from the bartlett school of architecture that focuses on the intersection of a unique crafting technique and computational design.

‘fabrick’ chair profile 

‘fabrick’ transforms a single flat sheet of felt material into a complex three dimensional form through stitching. the final design includes a structural chair and wall piece, made solely with the textile. in order to create structure, computer algorithms were used to arrive at optimum orientations and compositions. the overall form was broken into several smaller sections, then stitched by hand to form the desired shape. fabric was then impregnated with concrete, wetted, and allowed to dry into a final rigid form. 

detail 

stitching 

from flat sheet to 3D form 

deformation study 

computer model  

to-scale prototype 

‘fabrick’ on display at the B-pro show 2015 at the bartlett school of architecture

digital speculation of fabric construction with complex to simple language

project info:

direction: daniel widrig, stefan bassing, soomeen hahm
student team: I-ting tsai, somdatta majumdar, xixi zheng, yiru yun

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions  feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: nick brink | designboom