Architectural Knitted membranes

In the recent decade, the potential of knitting, through its ability for surface structural grading, has promoted the investigations towards its application in architecture. As fabrication and computation technologies have advanced, original methods for knit design have extended beyond garment design. This has enabled the transfer of CNC-knitting technology to the scale of construction application, forming the emerging field of knitted structural membranes.
Knitted structural membranes, by being employed in tension and force-driven in their shape, have a lot in common with the woven structural membranes, that are already widely used in architecture. Like wovens, knitted surfaces take a minimal shape under tension, creating a thin layer of a spatial boundary. However, the biggest difference between these two textile structural systems lies in their fiber arrangement, which reflects in the resulting membrane structural behavior. Unlike a linear fibrous system of wovens, knitted structural membranes offer a fibrous system of interconnected loops. This material attribute challenges the original methods of membrane design, the scale of application, fabrication, and assembly, commonly applied to woven textile materials. Using knit for architectural applications requires innovative approaches for design, analysis, material specification, and fabrication.