It was with these words that Sébastien Baril, CEO of Serge Ferrari Group, launched the 7th Material on Thursday, September 24, 2026. Behind this name lies an ambition: to establish composite membranes as a building material in their own right, on a par with concrete, metal and glass. And it was a case he had no intention of making alone. Facts, figures, real-world projects and architects were all called upon to make the case.

A name for something that already exists

For fifty years, Serge Ferrari membranes have covered stadiums, protected façades from the sun and sheltered public spaces. They are part of the global urban landscape, yet they are still treated as a category apart, as additions incorporated once a building has already been designed.

It is precisely this secondary status that we intend to challenge. The Group is making a clear case for a new role for architectural membranes: that of a fully fledged 7th building material. The ambition is to encourage specifiers to consider membranes on the same level as the six major historic material families that have shaped our cities: concrete, wood, metal, brick and terracotta, glass, and natural stone.

Why make this case today? Because the climate and energy challenges facing buildings are evolving faster than our traditional ways of building. This was at the heart of the argument put forward by Sébastien Baril, CEO of the Group, as he opened the presentation on September 24, 2026.

DISCOVER THE 7TH MATERIAL

“Heavy does not mean strong”

“Our buildings are designed for a world that no longer exists. We have known this for twenty years. And yet we continue to build them in exactly the same way.” From his opening remarks, Sébastien Baril chose to focus on the challenge rather than the celebration.

Breaking the vicious cycle of compensation

For centuries, building strong meant building heavy. Sébastien Baril set out to challenge this assumption. In his view, a material that cannot adapt to its environment can only compensate for its weaknesses.

Solutions are therefore added to protect buildings from the sun, air conditioning is installed to remove accumulated heat, and energy is consumed to compensate for what the structure itself cannot do. The buildings work, but they are constantly correcting themselves. “It’s not smart, it’s just heavy,” he summed up. And this heaviness comes at a cost—one the industry does not always see.

A material defined by its behavior, not its chemistry

Each of the six historic materials is defined by its composition. The 7th Material, by contrast, is defined by its behavior. Its performance does not depend on its mass, but on the way it responds to sunlight, wind and loads. For Sébastien Baril, this is “not an improvement, nor an alternative,” but an entirely new category of material.

Referring to the Pritzker Prize awarded in 2015 to engineer and architect Frei Otto for his research into material efficiency, Sébastien Baril pointed out that lightweight architecture had already received the highest level of theoretical recognition, without ever being given its own place in the official classification of materials. That is now changing. “The 7th Material is not a bet we are making. It is the consequence of what we have always done.”

A collective and open ambition

Serge Ferrari could have confined the concept to a proprietary brand or in-house specification. Instead, the Group chose to open it up to the architects, engineers and partners who are inventing new ways to use it. “We name the change; you build it,” Sébastien Baril concluded, inviting the audience to judge these claims not simply by his words, but by the buildings themselves.

In the field, membranes have already proved their worth

Before turning to the figures, an initial testimonial film demonstrated the material’s resistance in extreme environments. On the Matterhorn, at an altitude of 3,830 meters, the Capanna Carrel mountain hut withstands freezing temperatures and extreme UV exposure beneath a textile envelope that “will outlive us, that’s for sure,” according to its builder. In the United States and Qatar, other projects demonstrate the same ability to withstand demanding climatic conditions.

To substantiate these real-world results, Françoise Fournier Derely, who has 38 years of technical expertise within the Group, and Sylvia Risari, architect and Specification Manager, examined the material’s performance against strict criteria: every figure is linked to a real building, a specific location and a verifiable testing standard.

Reducing weight to reduce carbon

Weighing between 380 grams and 1.6 kg per square meter, membranes can be used to design roofs up to ten times lighter than conventional solutions, while reducing their carbon footprint over 50 years by a factor of three to four.

In Doha’s Msheireb Square, 1,080 folding textile panels help regulate temperatures in conditions reaching 50°C in the shade. At the Citadel of Ibiza, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, 250 m² of fabric creates a shaded area with a total weight of just 137 kg, without altering the historic structure thanks to a fully reversible installation.

Controlling solar radiation without obstructing the view

Widely used in Lyon, exterior Soltis screens block 97% of solar energy before it reaches the glazing and reduce buildings’ overall energy requirements by 39.59%, while maintaining views to the outside.

At the Le Camp campus in Aix-en-Provence, the 7,000 m² roof serves simultaneously as a thermal shield (SRI of 95), a natural light diffuser (1,000 lux without glare), a passive ventilation system and a rainwater collector.

Managing acoustics without blocking light

It is true that acoustic membranes absorb less sound than mineral wool. However, they offer one major advantage that mineral wool does not: they allow light to pass through. At the M9 Museum in Mestre, the same surface acts as an acoustic ceiling while allowing light into the courtyard. At Al Bayt Stadium, 60,000 spectators gather beneath a custom-designed woven ceiling, with no additional sound-absorbing material.

As Françoise Fournier Derely pointed out at the end of the demonstration: “Concrete is not a mistake.” Some structures need to remain heavy. But with the 7th Material, mass is no longer the default response it becomes a deliberate design choice.

Architects’ perspectives: designing with the material

To move beyond theory, the discussion then turned to practitioners dealing with the realities of projects and construction sites. Drawing on their experience, two architects from complementary backgrounds illustrated how membranes can move beyond being a purely technical solution to become the starting point of the creative process.

Nick Goldsmith: “Lightness has become an environmental imperative”

Having worked with Frei Otto in the 1970s, Nick Goldsmith traced the history of construction as an ongoing pursuit of material efficiency.

In his view, lightness is no longer simply a formal or aesthetic pursuit. Faced with increasingly frequent heatwaves and dwindling resources, it has become an imperative.

Shade must now be considered a genuine form of urban infrastructure, while the architectural envelope of tomorrow will function like an intelligent skin, capable of regulating flows of heat and energy through successive layers.

Nick Tyrer: “We don’t specify the membrane; we design with it”

For architect Nick Tyrer, composite membranes are transforming the way architectural practices work.

In Lima, to address recurring headwinds on the track of a sports complex, his team modeled adjustable textile blades whose geometry was entirely determined by fluid dynamics simulations. At Al Ain Stadium in the United Arab Emirates, the roof was shaped in direct response to the path of the sun, creating a cantilever spanning 140 meters.

In these projects, the material was not used to clad a pre-existing form. Instead, the behavior of the material itself generated the final form.

What comes next is still to be built

As the conference drew to a close, Sébastien Baril was careful not to present the launch as the culmination of a journey. Bridging the gap between today’s buildings and the responsive envelopes of tomorrow will be one of the key challenges of the coming decades.

“The name is ours. What gets built with it is not.” With these words, the Group set a milestone for the entire profession: a quantified progress report will be published next year to assess how far the industry has come.

Watch the conference replay