Floppy Logic

This paper discusses a body of work that investigates the 'architecture' of fashion and textiles, and how the concepts, aesthetics, techniques and construction of this architecture might be understood and used to design and fabricate objects and space differently. I discuss how these seemingly diverse disciplines can be used to traverse from the scale of material and garment to that of rooms and buildings. Working to develop an approach to the geometry of architecture where the material logic assist in seeking the appropriate geometry, rather than geometry first and materials second. By working with fashion and textile techniques, form and material are developed simultaneously to produce architecture. Digital advances in architectural modeling and fabrication allows us to work directly with disciplines that up until now, have only functioned as inspiration where the distance between them has been too great to bridge. A key concept I discuss is the Floppy, defined as the quality in material that requires extraneous support to produce architecture. Floppy generally refers to fabric but can also refer to any material that fails when there is not enough support. Through a set of architecture projects, the aesthetic, tactile nature of fabrics are brought into architecture. These projects demonstrate novel ways to judge material behaviours, and techniques to create form, working to draw out the inherent qualities or characters of the materials rather than subjugating them to only support, or only skin, or only surface. This paper discusses the potential of material, and understands material as having intrinsic qualities that can be exploited, where a condition is not applied but rather revealed