THE SEVENTH MATERIAL – CREATION
No geometry ruled out.
When performance stops depending on mass, form stops being decided by it. Span, lightness and tension become the variables an architect works with. The material does not impose a form. It makes one possible.
What the material no longer dictates.
For most of the history of building, the material set the limits and the architect worked inside them. Beyond a certain span, or below a certain
thickness, the answer was no.
The Seventh Material moves that boundary. Form proceeds from lightness, tension and span rather than from inertia. It lightens, it extends, it
accelerates.
The consequence is a different order of decision: performance stops limiting the intention and starts generating it.
Eight figures from one system.
A single tensioned shading system resolves into eight distinct geometries: cone, vault, arch, wave, hypar, ridge-and-valley, barrel, cantilever.
Geometry, lightness and span work together rather than against each other, which is what standard systems cannot offer. The shape is chosen for the project, not selected from a catalogue of what the material will tolerate.
At Bailu Stadium in Xiamen, that produced a roof shaped as an egret opening its wings, covering approximately 55,000 m2, and admitting daylight across the whole span. Architect: Southeast University Architects & Engineers Co. Opened September 2023.
WHAT THE 7TH MATERIAL MAKES POSSIBLE
Tuned before it is installed.
Texture, colour and translucency are set during manufacture, not corrected afterwards.
Light transmission is specified project by project, on a scale from 5% to 50%. That is the range within which a designer decides how much daylight crosses the envelope, and it is set before the membrane is made.
Colour is formulated to order. The limiting case is a translucent red – brilliant and crossed by light at the same time – which was long treated as a chromatic problem without a solution.
