Today, architects around the world are resetting the tools of design and creating a language that includes variation and complexity. In this book, theory, history and research are integrated with digital design techniques and computer-based fabrication technologies to give us a first peek into what the future of architecture may look like. Textile Tectonics presents the understanding of textiles as the key components of architecture. It explores tectonics not simply as structure, but as the expressivity of matter itself, where the classic opposition of structure and ornament, or abstraction and empathy, begins to dissolve.

„Architectural design is not about having ideas, but about having techniques, techniques that operate on a material level. It's about making matter think and live by itself.“­ - Lars Spuybroek on his own brand of textile tectonics or „soft constructivism“, in which textiles are transformed into the tectonic through conventional textile techniques - weaving, bundling, interlacing, braiding, knitting or knotting - effectively building structure through softness and flexibility.

„Today, digital tools allow us to understand structure as being integral to material complexity and aesthetic delicacy.“ - Lars Spuybroek

Textile Tectonics reveals how natural, ornamental and folkloristic patterns – from the veins of leaves to Gothic rose windows, from foam formations to traditional styles of hair braiding and from Celtic knotwork to knitting patterns – can be digitally elaborated into breathtaking, programmable and architecturally viable structures.

Internationally renowned architect and researcher Lars Spuybroek has been investigating the relationships between art, architecture and information technology. After a twentieth century dominated by standardization and mass production, contemporary digital technologies are now offering unprecedented possibilities. Textile Tectonics maps out this new territory. Spuybroek presents a theoretical framework and a detailed taxonomy of patterns and structures, followed by more than 100 richly illustrated pages with designs for skyscrapers and façades based on organizational principles ranging from rose windows to knitting patterns.