The Future of Shade
How the World of Shade Structures Is Changing
As these and other entries into the Future of Shade competition demonstrate, shade is not just an afterthought, but is increasingly informing architecture.
“Fabric lets architects push the envelope on shade design because it takes a bunch of things out of the equation,” Kushner explains. “It's cost-effective. It's highly durable. It comes in a million colors. So, those are all things that we worry about. Now that that's out of the way, we can concentrate on the good, fun stuff, which is how we can start to manipulate it and shape it to do things that we couldn't normally do with solid and rigid architecture.”
Bernstein agrees: “Architecture provides shade, but it generally provides shade using hard or rigid materials. Using soft materials, you can provide shade in ways that are flexible so that everyone can have the amount of shade they want. Shade can be personalized or customized.”
Xafari: Future of Shade 2014 Grand Prize Winner
Architect: Tony Leung, Architect, Hong Kong
Description: Inverted umbrella shapes that provide shade and collect water. Noting the way that water beads and rolls off of the shading fabric's moisture-resistant surfaces, Leung conceived a design with a humanitarian goal: to collect water, the world's most precious natural resource. The resulting series of inverted, retractable “umbrellas” catch rainwater and funnel it through bamboo or steel pipes into buried storage bottles that can later be drawn by a lever pump. Thirty-three modules can cover a 6-foot by 6-foot area and also provide shelter.
Scott Campbell: “Xafari is really an interesting design. It's colorful, it's practical, it has the ability to provide shade and collect rainwater. I thought that was really clever of the designer to come up with that.”
Fred Bernstein: “Xafari is really amazing because the idea is so simple. Xafari provides shade and a lot of other things. Mainly, it collects drinking water, which obviously will help rural communities in poor countries. It's rather remarkable that we haven't seen this idea before. Maybe somebody else has thought of it, but the idea of inverting an umbrella so that it catches water and then funnels the rainwater into a jug so the water can be used by villagers seems very simple, but it's brilliant. It's really a lovely idea that can make a difference in people's lives using this material.”
Marc Kushner: “By flipping the umbrella, it starts to be able to collect rainwater, which the stem can then push out into collection vessels. It slots together with neighboring umbrellas, and it does that through a really ingenious pattern that can be infinitely replicated. And then, they even started to think about what colors they could use in the spectrum of shading fabric materials. And they presented a really beautiful, muted palette of browns and grays that just brought the whole thing together.
“Xafari can be used in a multitude of instances, and that's something that all of the judges really responded to. It can be used for a fancy party on the lawn. Or it can also be used to create a shelter in, say, a natural disaster. My sister runs an organization in Malawi that works with orphans and orphanages. These children learn outdoors, and they typically learn under trees. And there aren't actually that many trees. So, this would be a perfect application for a setting that doesn't need a ton of shelter. So, it can be open on the sides, but it creates shade and can collect rainwater at the same time.”
Image courtesy of Sunbrella
The Design Benefits of Using a Pliable Material like Fabric
For architects, and particularly the younger breed of designers born into a world changing at perhaps the fastest pace ever, switching from a strict reliance on traditional building materials to a fabric-infused language should be smooth.
“We usually use hard stuff, like stone and wood,” Kushner says. “So, with fabric, you can crinkle it; you can fold it; you can crease it. You can do fun things with it that you can't do with the other stuff we usually use.”
“There's something so incredibly beautiful and intriguing and compelling about translucent materials,” Bernstein adds.
Design and Function with Shade Structures
In 2013, the inaugural Future of Shade competition brought in dozens of innovative ideas from architects inspired by the shading fabric itself.
Bernstein explains the appeal: “Fabric is light, so you can certainly do things with fabric that you can't do with other materials.”
As these design competitions affirm, shade and shading fabrics excite and inspire architects' imaginations all over the world.
In order to appreciate the future of shade and position oneself on the leading edge of this movement, it helps to review the past, the long history of using fabrics as architectural add-ons, and how the practice has evolved in the past century.
Photo © Gerber Architekten: Christian Richters
In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a glass-enclosed expansion to the King Fahd National Library was complemented by a woven glass-fiber membrane made of 1,000 twisted square awnings that block 93 percent of the incoming sunlight.
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