Responsive or Electronic textiles for environmental architectures.

1. Responsive Textiles for
Architecture
Ashutosh Rahul Vatsha
14050221037
ID-PD

2. What're Responsive Textiles
Responsive Textiles are also known as e textiles as they're fabrics that can sense
and react via an active control mechanism to environment conditions or stimuli from
mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic or photo sources which enable
computing, digital components and microelectronics to be embedded in them. These
fabrics have been developed with new technologies that provide added value to the
user.

3. • Royal courts made for the purpose of entertainment were built with a weather proof canvas inside
and a decorated fabric outside. The textile tents by the 18th and 19th century had been used for
military purposes and in building big circuses. source
• 1967: United states pavilion at the monteral expo based on the analogy of a "breathing skin",
selectively opened and closed as the sun moved across the sky embedded with light
sensors. source video
• Early 1990s: MIT students started research on smart clothing for military use.
• 1992: A total of 260 umbrellas in Medina Piazza aka Medina Plaza Umbrella by Mahmoud Bodo
Rasch with basic responsive capabilities to address environmental conditions (Solar exposure,
Wind loads). source video
• 1998: Beginning of the integration between fashion & technology - most notably by Levi and Phillips
Electronics.
History

4. History
• 2001: Integration of medical uses into clothing. ZOLL LifeVest VivoSense Life Shirt
• 2008: Massage Me Jacket which turns a video game player’s excess energy into a back massage
for an innocent bystander. source
• 2011: Ohio State researchers experiment with embedding antennae in clothing. source
• 2016: Google And Levi's Launch The First 'Smart' Jean Jacket For Urban Cyclists called Project
Jacquard. source video
• 2017: Philip Beesley's Hylozoic Ground, Digitally manufactured "breathing pore" in textile
installation. source video

5. Classification
• Passive Smart Textiles: Can only sense the environment with sensors embedded
inside.
• Active Smart Textiles: Can sense and react as well to the environmental stimuli
with the help of sensors and actuators.
• Ultra Smart Textiles: Can sense, react and also adapt themselves to the
environment due to cognition, reasoning and activating capacities.

6. Applications of Responsive Textiles
• Health Monitoring
• Sports training data acuisition
• Monitoring personnel handling materials
• Innovative Fashion
• Mordern Architectural structures

7. Smart Architextiles for Architecture
Innovations in the field of functional and smart textiles are continously developed
and commercial applications are actively created.
These are technical textile fabrics suitable for exterior architecture & are used for
both functional and asthetic purposes.

8. Architextile: Materials
1. Chromic Materials
2. Conductive Materials
3. Electricity Generating Materials
4. Phase Change Materials
5. Shape Memory Materials

9. Chromic Materials
• Photochromic Materials: Can change their colour in reaction to the change of
intensity of light.
• Thermochromatic Materials: Can change colour in reaction to temperature
changes.

10. Conductive Materials
Electrically conductive textiles are called electrotextiles. Conductive materials are
able to carry and conduct electric energy
Optical fibres, are able to carry signals as pulses of light without repeaters for long
distances.

11. Electricity Generating Materials
These materials generate electric energy in response to chemical, light, temperature
and pressure changes.
Photo-voltaic cells are capable of producing electric energy from solar radiation.

12. Phase Change Materials (PCMs)
PCMs are usually coated onto textile surfaces.
These textile include microcapsules, which store and release energy through the
phase change of materials .
The Development of Phase Change Material technology begun with a 1970's NASA
research programme.
These materials may be used in roof coverings, canopies and curtains to store solar
thermal energy or to help in insulation and air conditioning; this stabilizes the
difference between day and night temperatures.

13. Shape Memory Materials (SMMs)
These materials react to external stimuli by changing their shape.
When the stimuli are no longer experienced, the materials restore their original
shape.
The external stimulus may be related to electric and magnetic fields, pH-value,
temperature, stress or UV-light.
The reaction maybe related to properties concerning for example friction, natural
frequency, position, shape, stiffness, strain or water vapour penetration.
Ceramics like SMC, Matal Alloys like SMA and Polymers like SMP can act as shape
memory materials.

14. Architextile: Common Fabrics
• PVC Coated Polyester: It's one of the most common architectural fabrics. The
advantages are tensile strength and high elasticity with lifespan of 15-20 yrs.
• PTFE Coated Fibreglass: It's often an alternative to PVC Coated polyester
fabrics. Mostly it's used for expensive projects and it has a low elasticity factor/
poor flexibility, It comes with a lifespan of 30-40 yrs.
• ETFE Foil: These films are replacing textile fabrics more often. It comes very
cheap and with a lifespan of 25-35 years. It's often chosen for pneumatic
structures, greenhouses, swimming pool buildings etc..

15. Metabolistic Architecture source
The concept of morphogenesis is informing a growing search of research fields.
Contemporary thinking in biology, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and
robotics has given rise to a notion of form as a consequence of the self organization
of complex systems, where iterative processes generate not only responsive
behaviours but physical manifestations of them.
1. Breathing Room
2. Vivisection
3. Diversions

16. Breathing Room
It's a responsive textile structure.
It's an interactive installation developed and realized in collaboration with Karin
Bech.
The response of textile is subtle- a slight inhalation, an increase of pulse, as the
membrane breathes, opening and closing itself according to its own internal
physiognomy.
The rhythmic oscillations are counteracted, shaped and changed by users'
adjustments.

17. Vivisection
It's a collaboration with designer Simon Lovind, is the making of a live section, a
sensing skin that acts and reacts to its inhabitation.
The conductive silk-steel blend of the fabric allows for passage of electronic signals.
When coupled with antenna-equipped sensor chips, the entire fabric works as a
sensor which can feel the presence of the viewers
The sensors inform a network of distributed micro-computers, that in turn control
fans which inflate and deflate internal bladders in the structures.

18. Diversions
The robotic membranes presented here speculate on whether a material might be
described through a similar construct of habit-making.
Using "habit" as metaphor and blueprint, these robotic membranes seek to engage
the flux and instability of "the embodied" as it shapes from through behaviour.