Ten awards given in the ‘Textile Structures for New Building’ competition

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What constitutes innovative and successful building with textiles? The ten award-winning projects of the 'Textile Structures for New Building' student competition provide outstanding answers to this question. On the occasion of Techtextil, Leading International Trade Fair for Technical Textiles and Nonwovens, which is to be held at Frankfurt Fair and Exhibition Centre from 11 to 13 June 2013, the student competition honours future-oriented ideas for building with textiles and textile-reinforced materials. "Building and architecture with textiles is one of the world's growth areas. This is one of the reasons we promote the interests of young people and a large number of very high-quality projects was submitted this year", says Michael Jänecke, Director Brand Management Technical Textiles / Techtextil of Messe Frankfurt. With the support of the international TensiNet association, Brussels, as sponsor, Techtextil holds the competition for students of architecture, civil engineering and product design every two years.

The international jury of experts selected ten projects, including two Honourable Mentions, for an award. The following categories were available for selection: Macro- and Micro-Architecture, Environment and Ecology and Composites and Hybrid Structures. All awards and honourable mentions will be presented during an evening ceremony at Congress Centre Messe Frankfurt on 10 June 2013. Additionally, the projects will be on show in a special exhibition in Hall 4.1 (Stand K41) throughout the fair.

Macro-Architecture
An award goes to the Adaptive Soft Structure project. Inspired by the knots of blades of grass, a German student has developed adaptive soft façade systems. Through examinations of the geometry of pressure fluctuations, the flat elastic surface of the façade was stiffened with flexible wedges. Another award goes to the Czech Tensegrity Membrane Tower, a tower based on the tensegrity principle. Typical of this are continuously linked elements under tension between isolated spreader bars extended by membrane sails.

Micro-Architecture
The Hungarian Textile structures for biomorphic architecture
project illustrates textile structures in the form of material work. The weaving patterns are made of identical pieces of felt, which can be generated either flat or as three-dimensional curves. A second award goes to another Hungarian project, Metamorphosis Moving, a material-independent structure consisting of various thin and contoured material layers, which is distinguished by great flexibility. This is achieved by weaving extremely thin and strong threads in the warp direction with the strips of material.

Composites and Hybrid Structures
An award in this category goes to the German ICD – ITKE Research Pavilion 2012 project, a compact and extremely light pavilion made using digital and robot-aided production processes. The spun bundle of carbon and glass fibres are bonded and arranged in a flower-like shape.

Environment and Ecology
A way in which an old container ship can be used is shown by the award-winning project entitled Tissue fond – L'Unité flottante, inhabiting Alexander. The aim of a Spanish student was to keep the structure of the ship and to give the impression of a floating garden. This is made possible by large ventilation and inspection openings in the deck and by the integration of textile support structures. OL Invaders - Hybrids, another project by Spanish students, is an interwoven, two-layer structure, which is designed to be used for cooling in urban environments. In combination with the vegetation, the hybrid structure should grow to form the shell of a building. Finally, the jury was impressed by the German trans²kin project, a new, open thermal collector with no heat insulation on the basis of glass-fibre reinforced plastic fabrics. On this basis, the students developed a second building shell for sun-protection and energy generation.

Honourable Mentions
Two projects were awarded honourable mentions: Entrance Hall Hauswich from Germany is based on unwanted textiles and selfmade wire frames, and thus gives building columns a greater spatial quality. The chandelier-like constructions create a vertical bearing structure and ensure better lighting conditions. A second project entitled Acoustic Wave focuses on the use of nonwovens for their acoustic qualities. As her starting point, a German student took the irrigation and drainage of the nonwoven through absorbent material, to control the reflection characteristics in this way.

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