Architextiles (Architectural Design)

Focusing on the intersections between textiles and architectural design, this title communicates the full range of possibilities for a multidisciplinary design hybrid. It examines the generative concepts, forms, patterns, materials, processes, technologies and practices that are driving this cross-fertilisation in contemporary urban and architectural design. Architextiles represent a transition stage in the reorientation of spatial design towards a more networked, dynamic, interactive, communicative and multifunctional state. The paradigms of fashion and textile design, with their unique, accelerated aesthetics and ability to embody a burgeoning, composite and complex range of properties such as lightness, flow, flexibility, surface, complexity and movement have a natural affinity with architecture's shifts towards a more liquid state. The preoccupation with textiles in architecture challenges traditional perceptions and practices in interior, architectural, urban, textile and fashion design. Interweaving new designs and speculative projects for the future, Architextiles, brings together architects, designers, engineers, technologists, theorists and materials researchers to unravel these new methodologies of fabricating space.    

Contributors include:

Dominique Perrault (DPA)

Lars Spuybroek (NOX and University of Atlanta)

Will Alsop (RCA and SMC Alsop)

Nigel Coates (RCA and Branson Coates Architecture)

Matilda McQuaid (Cooper Hewitt Museum)

Ron Arad (RCA and Ron Arad Associates)

Tristan Simmonds, Daniel Bosia and Martin Self (Arup Advanced Geometry Unit)

David Wakefield (Tensys)

Dagmar Richter (UCLA)

Peter Testa and Devyn Weiser (Columbia University and Testa Architecture)

Tom Verebes, Yosuke Obuchi and Theodore Spyropoulos (AA_DRL)

Robert Kronenburg (University of Liverpool)

Anne Toomey (RCA)

Bradley Quinn

Marie O' Mahoney

Mark Garcia (RCA)

Mark Garcia is the academic coordinator in the Department of Architecture at the RCA.  He has lectured on the RCA-wide MPhil/PhD Research Methods Course and teaches spatial design theory and design research methodologies.  His current projects focus on the relationships between architectural/urban design and fashion/textile design, and on contemporary spatial design theory and the visualisation of art and design research methodologies, the architectural diagram and sketch, and on play, games and toys in architecture.