SOFT STRUCTURES
Angel Beale
2025 Spring Residency
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Kites, bikes, camping tents, and sailing boats are all composed of manufactured parts designed for assembly. This is also true about shoes and cell phones, but the previous items exhibit performance constraints that make them instructive as architectural objects. Their parts must extend into space in their pure structural form. Cables and chords as tensile members, films as membrane surfaces, tubes that resist moment and compression.
They have another feature in common. They are cold assembled after resale by a consumer. The parts themselves are predominantly flat stock material that extends linearly out of the production line. A roll of high density polyethylene film is 54” wide by infinity. An extruded aluminum tube is 0.492” by infinity. Stainless steel webbing plates can be stamped out at 1000 per minute and forever.
At IPA I have designed and built three tensile structures adhering to auster economic and assembly constraints. 1, all components must be mass producible and manufactured from basic stock material. This means there is no 3D printing, machining, welding or casting. Cold form processes like bending and stamping are allowed. 2, these structures can be assembled by one person, without tools.
They have another feature in common. They are cold assembled after resale by a consumer. The parts themselves are predominantly flat stock material that extends linearly out of the production line. A roll of high density polyethylene film is 54” wide by infinity. An extruded aluminum tube is 0.492” by infinity. Stainless steel webbing plates can be stamped out at 1000 per minute and forever.
At IPA I have designed and built three tensile structures adhering to auster economic and assembly constraints. 1, all components must be mass producible and manufactured from basic stock material. This means there is no 3D printing, machining, welding or casting. Cold form processes like bending and stamping are allowed. 2, these structures can be assembled by one person, without tools.
COLLABORATORS/SUPPORT
Sewing/production support:
Tent B, Lanii Johnson
Tent Z, Emily Ch
Tent B, Lanii Johnson
Tent Z, Emily Ch
People
