creator Carvallo, Maria Paulina advisor Sobek, Werner A facade may serve many functions throughout the life of a building, but the primary purpose of a building’s facade is to protect the interior of a structure from the outside environment. By examining an element of every facade design, its openings, one may also find solutions to other design and layout questions concerning a building’s interior. Textile facades show potential as new and interesting materials for facade design. However, textile facades must reinvent or adapt standard facade elements such as windows, doors, and other openings within the constraints of the material properties exhibited by textiles. This thesis explores potential facade opening mechanisms, including technical and natural examples. Details of textile facades are considered, including laser cutting of polyester fabrics, textile material properties and tension deformation, and a variety of textile facade designs. Furthermore, a standardized design workflow and process for considering multiple environmental variables present in and around facades, such as solar thermal, day lighting, ventilation, and identity, are discussed and illustrate that the methodology applied herein can be used to predict other applications of textiles. Submitted by Dana Lamparello (dlampare@iit.edu) on 2012-03-13T15:39:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MPCarvallo_MSArchThesis_TextileOpenings.pdf: 11109097 bytes, checksum: d69bff22244d546b929ad7a2efd559c4 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2012-03-13T15:39:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MPCarvallo_MSArchThesis_TextileOpenings.pdf: 11109097 bytes, checksum: d69bff22244d546b929ad7a2efd559c4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-12 M.S. in Architecture, December 2011 2011-12-06 2011-12 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/2600 en Thesis born digital application/pdf In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access ARCH / Architecture Illinois Institute of Technology Affiliated department