For the third year running, Architizer is excited to partner with Sunbrella for the Future of Shade Competition to design beautiful spaces using fabric. With the growing interest and increasingly diverse range of entries in the past two editions of the annual competition, this year sees its expansion to three distinct categories — Humanitarian, Wellness Garden, and Building Shade — and three grand prize winners. Whether you’re an architect or a designer, a professional or a student, enter now for a chance to win one of the three $10,000 grand prizes — we’re looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
The Future of Shade Competition is now open, and with the introduction of three categories for the third edition, we’re excited about the opportunity to explore each category in more detail. Now that we’ve seen some of the possibilities for the Humanitarian and Wellness Garden categories, we are pleased to introduce the third and final one, Building Shade.
Building products and materials continue to improve apace with technology, and fabrics are no exception. This category encompasses conceptual designs that explore new and potentially revolutionary applications of fabrics — from standalone proposals to extant architecture re-imaginings; from a single stroke of genius to iterative approaches to pushing the boundaries.
As a highly versatile building material, fabric lends itself both to practical solutions and unconventional conceptual designs. Tensile structures have a poetic beauty all their own, as the supporting members can be entirely exposed, while a compelling combination of cables, steel, wood, and other materials can complement the flexible and translucent qualities of fabrics. By thinking outside the box when it comes to choosing building materials, architects are able to develop unique designs that not only result in an innovative space, but inspire others to think differently about their choices when selecting building materials. The possibilities for experimentation are endless. Entries can be entirely conceptual or attached to existing real-life buildings/spaces.
Architects are continually pushing the envelope to develop new uses for products and materials in their designs. At SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, where the temperate climate is ideal for breezy architecture, fabric is used for temporary, freestanding pavilions by some of the best young designers, not least because the school commissions a number of projects that use the versatile material. On SCI-Arc’s 40th anniversary, Oyler Wu Collaborative designed a structure for the afterparty of the April 2013 gala. “Stormcloud” was a steel structure fitted with stretched spandex. It is initially experienced as a volume, but upon further exploration, its spaces are revealed to be cavities, while the fabric and structure create different atmospheric effects. Natural and artificial lighting is used to make it even more awe-inspiring.
© Patterns
League of Shadows by P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S.
For the 2013 graduation ceremony, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S designed League of Shadows, a similar fabric graduation pavilion. During the early and late hours of the afternoon, the fabric pavilion’s shadows create zones that are sheltered from the sun. In addition to the shading performance of the three vertically oriented concave surfaces, the structure also carves out enveloping surfaces on the interior that frame views of the ceremony. The fabric shell creates a large mass at one scale, but upon closer examination, it has a textural effect due to its transparency and its properties as a textile.
While Sci-Arc’s pavilions show what happens when the boundaries of fabric are pushed, textiles can be used in almost any discipline. To give a recent example, Central Park recently celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s iconic The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005 installation, which brought the park to life for two weeks with a procession of 16-foot-high brightly colored vinyl gates along 23 miles of paths through the park, 7,503 in all. Originally conceived in 1979, these fabric sculptures were finally realized in 2005, serving as both romantic folly and architectural intervention through the Frederick Olmsted-designed landscapes.
“Twisty” by FABLAB Design
Like the SCI-Arc pavilions and Christo’s work, past winners of the Future of Shade competition are not only concepts, but have been built so visitors can experience the possibilities of fabric in real life. The 2013 winner, “Twisty,” was constructed at full scale for Architectural Digest’s AD Oasis at The James Royal Palm in Miami. Designed by Kevin Chu of the Hong Kong/Beijing-based FABLAB Design, its Sunbrella fabric panels function as blinds in the shaded, visually pleasing architectural space. Attached to the outdoor space at the hotel, the space served as a VIP destination and relaxing haven during Art Basel while displaying the future of shade design and innovation as it relates to the way people live, work, and play.
2014 Future of Shade Honorable Mention: Yanay Hotel from Sunbrella on Vimeo.
Similarly, the 2014 Honorable Mention, Yanay Hotel by Mexico’s Rojkind Arquitectos and Argentina’s Diéguez Fridman, realized a futuristic vision of what shade can offer: spread across the meditative landscape of Amatlán, each of the 19 bungalows is a polygonal reinterpretation of the traditional fabric tent. Made from Sunbrella textiles stretched over a metal frame, their forms open to let in natural light and offer views of the mountains and sky. Light shines through the translucent fabric at night, transforming the tents into luminous jacks.
Since 1961, Sunbrella has produced textiles that offer legendary durability, fade-resistance, and ease of cleaning. But even as they develop new high-performance materials for both indoor and outdoor applications, it is up to designers to put these performance products to use, and humanitarian design may well be one place where it is needed most.
To learn more about the Sunbrella Future of Shade competition and enter for a chance to win $10,000, please see the competition page. See all the winners from 2014 at www.futureofshade.com.