Design of a novel tensile shading system with a cellular structure using coated textiles

The paper deals with a novel textile component for shading curtain walls, and methods for manufacturing it. Starting from the state of the art of textile façade systems, a new cellular structure based on the “Kirigami Honeycomb” pattern is presented, which has the double advantage of a reduced and variable thickness on the transversal façade section and the double-curved large span porous frontal skin. The new component, called “Textile Voronoi”, aims to provide on-site a multi-adaptable honeycomb pre-fabricated panel that can be differently stretched on the façade, alternating crowded parts with more opened ones. The cellular structure also allows reducing the number of structural elements compared to current structural textile skins, due to the tensional balance between each cell of the matrix. The paper demonstrates that is feasible to get customized cross-section (thickness) of the shading systems and contemporarily a wide dimensional variation of the frontal cells in the façade. A classification of the shading possibilities, together with the parametric algorithm that manages the variation range and leads the 2D manufacturing process are also presented. Then, a tridimensional geometry of stretched component has been modeled in a building test-sample for analyzing the membrane stress plot and the internal daylight factor