TEXTILES.ORG
Habit forming
January 1st, 2015
The secret to a sideline in cleaning and repair is convincing customers to do it regularly. Cleaning and repair of fabric products is a bit like pie-making: It’s an extremely useful skill, and there’s a sizable market for it, but it’s not everyone’s strong suit. Today’s high-performance fabrics are an investment. They have a longer […]
The world of your website
January 1st, 2015
Why it’s important to give your website the careful attention it needs to support the success of your business. All industries experience their share of change. The fabrics industry is no different. From hemp to cotton to microfibers to “smart clothes” that gauge body temperature and GPS locations, the fabrics industry is undergoing a rapid […]
Beam it to me
January 1st, 2015
A vanguard fabric airbeam supporting a tent atop Carnegie Hall is poised to expand markets. It takes a village to raise a child. And it takes a team to raise a tent—at least in the case of a challenging, vanguard installation atop a nine-story building in the center of Manhattan. Carnegie Hall, the renowned music […]
Rest stops on the road to success
January 1st, 2015
David Snoad implements systems and empowers employees so his business can flourish—and he can take a vacation. "I’ve been away six months of this calendar year and we’re about to have our most profitable year ever,” says David Snoad, managing director of Pinz Pty. Ltd., Seaton, Australia. “Because of my time away, I’m more productive […]
Walking on air
January 1st, 2015
The Collectif de la Meute (Collective of the Pack), Douarnenez, France, is an affinity group enthusiastic about creating art—theater, visual arts, digital productions, circus acts, architecture and urban planning—in public spaces. The transitory nature of modern life inspired the Pack to create a movable public space: the Air Bubble, “a temporary, nomadic and living shelter, […]
U-shaped UV protection
January 1st, 2015
Baylor University in Waco, Texas, prides itself on its football program and demanded “a first-class facility for a first-class university and sports program,” says Douglas Radcliffe, business development manager for membrane canopy expert Birdair North America, Buffalo, N.Y. Waco’s subtropical climate, characterized by hot summers and mild winters, can produce 90-degree temperatures during any month […]
50 years of protected wilderness
January 1st, 2015
On the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, signed into law Sept. 3, 1964, by President Lyndon Johnson, Wilderness50, Nature’s Best Photography magazine and the Smithsonian Institute asked photographers throughout the nation to define wilderness in pictures—and selected winners are now displayed as large-format prints in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, […]
A rocking good time
January 1st, 2015
The Wover, a gigantic woven rocker, was a favorite exhibit at the 2014 Seattle Design Festival in October. Created and installed by a team of volunteers, it was designed with two guiding principles in mind. The first, fittingly, was the theme of the festival, Design in Motion. The second was to juxtapose architectural tectonics with […]
Hunker down in shanty town
January 1st, 2015
Only in Minnesota, where many are cold, but few are frozen, would an art project invite innovative thinkers to build temporary ice-fishing shanties on a lake in below-zero temperatures. The Art Shanty Projects, Minneapolis, Minn., holds an annual event to build new, engaging public art in relatively unregulated public spaces—like a frozen lake in February. […]
Top form
January 1st, 2015
The first of its kind, the Carnegie Hall Airtent, designed by Pvilion and fabricated by Anchor Industries, is a high-pressure airbeam structure for easy and rapid deployment. The composite airbeams are engineered to meet New York City’s stringent building codes, and the custom PVDF-coated polyester fabric skin is manufactured to be beautiful and functional. The […]