It is undeniable that there are always fascinating comparisons awaiting to be made between certain structures or constructions that we find in architecture, art and fashion. In yesterday's post we mentioned for example crinolines and hoopskirts. Domes are among the first architectural features that come to mind while talking about these wearable structures especially, when you look at drawings or images of the crinoline cage showing the circular shape of this fashion construction.
Yet, in yesterday's post, we also mentioned the fact that, before the arrival on the fashion scene of the steel crinoline cage, many experiments were carried out to sustain the full skirts favoured by women. Inventors tried to come up with structures made with rubber and inflatable tubes, whalebones and cane. In 1856, J. Gedge took out a patent for crinolines made using an airtight fabric with a small aperture for the introduction of the nozzle of a small bellows for inflating them and a larger aperture for the escape of the air when the wearer wished to sit down.
Architecturally speaking domes and air point towards Dante Bini, the Italian architect who came up with the idea of building with air. Bini realised that compressed air could be used economically in the construction business, after observing the way a pressostatic structure under which he played a tennis match on a winter day during a snow storm, was not collapsing under the weight of the snow that had accumulated upon it.
Intuition led the way to further experiments and Bini developed a building system consisting in a concrete dome reinforced by coaxial circles of steel rods secured by segments of chains, lifted and shaped by low air pressure. The first Binishell was successfully constructed in one day on 16th May 1964 in Crespellano and, as the years passed, Bini raised 1,600 Binishells in 23 countries and launched several patented systems - the Binishell, the Binistar, the Binishelter, the Binix, and the Minishell.
The concentric rings of steel rods linked by steel chains that reinforced the Crespellano dome and the fact that air was used to raise it, immediately conjure up visions of the ingenious though rather complicated system made with inflatable tubes that preceded the crinoline cage, but also point towards later versions of this fashion piece made with steel rods.
Fashion favoured voluminous structures in the 1800s that looked as if they had been built by inflating air inside them: the 1830s garment in the fourth picture in this post (from the FIDM Museum collection), features for example sleeves that look as if they had been pumped up with air, though they were supported with large cotton pillows - called "plumpers" - and filled with eiderdown attached at the upper arms.
Fashion-wise the late editor and icon of style Anna Piaggi was often pictured sporting some kind of inflatable toy on her head, as if it were a surrealist hat, while inflatable designs were a trademark of Gareth Pugh's early collections (though the designer kept on experimenting with his air-filled gowns in more recent years as well).
The art world also seems to be interested in the power of air and inflatable pieces: Tomás Saraceno launched today at Paris' Grand Palais a project entitled "Aerocene".
This series of air-fuelled sculptures will float in the longest, sustainable journey around the world without engines, becoming buoyant only by the heat of the sun and infrared radiation from the surface of Earth.
Floating in the air without burning of fossil fuels, but lifted by the sun and carried by the wind, the art installation - coinciding with the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP21 currently on in Paris - questions our troublesome dependency on fossil and hydrocarbon fuels and pollution.
Visionary inflatable structures and projects revolving around the use of air can therefore still provide intellectual stimulus: who knows what kind of meaningful and powerful lessons could be learnt or what kind of innovations may be produced by a collaborative project between art, architecture and fashion revolving around the idea of building with air.
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