Photo: Jonathan Becker
These fabrics represent the extension of experimental work on the construction of a School of Engineers at Marne-la-VallŽe. Using a plastic thread patented by the Japanese and woven in France, we succeeded in producing cloths whose mesh had the unusual property of keeping their shape indefinitely. The threads are soldered together. This woven fabric had a number of advantages, especially its rigidity under tension; but it also had a drawback; it was slightly inflammable. So there could be no question of using these materials for the project of a library. We had to use absolutely non-inflammable materials.
These large fabrics interested us as a new architectural idiom, at last freeing us from the need to use large numbers of discrete modular elements. When using what I call "small plates", you have to number the parts, create schematic geometries in relation to the constructive grid. With these large pieces of fabric we obtained surfaces that could be hung wall to wall, wall to ceiling, unified and seamless. This underscored the architecture, creating places that are, metaphorically speaking, "hollowed out", continuous, unassembled. An architecture of sculptured masses.
Dominique Perrault
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