Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance

Stronger, faster, lighter, safer, smarterthese are the textiles of tomorrow. From the carbon-fiber composite bicycle frame to the cardiac constraint sock and the Mars Pathfinder landing airbags, material innovations surround us. Our landscape, our buildings, our vehicles, our clothes, and our bodies all benefit from these highly engineered performance textiles.

Featuring examples of fully realized products from all classes of technical textilesarchitectural, product design, apparel, medicine, transportation, aerospace, industry, and the environmentExtreme Textiles highlights successful collaborations between design, industry, and science. Large, full-color illustrations and essays by some of today's most influential designers and scientists trace the extraordinary developments made in textiles over the last twenty years and suggest what is to come.

Tradition, technology, beauty, and strength are joined together in the materials and products presented in this volume. Whether exploring space, running a marathon, or fashioning the latest trend, we will be inspired by these extreme textiles every day.

Extreme Textiles accompanies the exhibition of the same name at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum beginning in April 2005.

Matilda McQuaid is the exhibitions curator and head of the Textiles Department at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Formerly of the Museum of Modern Art, she has curated more than thirty exhibitions and has authored several books.