In the history of architecture there have been quite a few successful buildings integrating textiles in their structure or smart fabrics, especially in our modern times.
One of the first experiments of buildings incorporating textiles was created in the early 1930s when, approached by the Cotton Textile Institute to design a house made out of cotton, architects Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher came up with a raised structure that looked metallic from the outside, but that was actually wrapped up in cotton. The structure was used like a weekend house in the woods by Kocher.
The structure was featured on Popular Science in 1933 and the magazine highlighted it was a project to solve low-cost housing problems as it was rather cheap since it comprised a roof and walls of fireproof cotton ducking stretched over a wooden frame; the inner walls were also made of cotton and insulating material may have been added to exclude heat and cold.
Though it was more or less a large tent, the house, comprising a parking space and playground beneath it, proved rather solid as it survived a big 1938 storm, but was eventually torn down by developers in the '50s.
It would be nice to see a new version of the "Canvas House", maybe designed by an architectural and design firm à la Studio Samira Boon in collaboration with a fashion designer, but employing special fabrics by an innovative textile company. Anybody up for this challenge?
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