ARTIFACT : A01
DRAPED PNEUMATICS

2023

Investigating the Morphogenic Potential of Inflatable Textile Structures


         Draped Pneumatics, 2023 :  video performance (2:13).                                                         

Draped Pneumatics is an exploration into the flexibility and performative potential of soft-form architecture. This sewn structure was designed to inflate — to press outward, collapse inward,and shift with breath and pressure. It was sewn to explode.

Drawing parallels between the folding of fabric and the division of boundaries in the built environment, this work questions how cities are "folded" by concrete and steel. Through air, tension, and textile, Draped Pneumatics proposes an alternative logic—one of softness, adaptability, and responsive form.

As our built environments become increasingly rigid, the urgency for flexible, reconfigurable systems grows. This project investigates folding not just as a fabrication method, but as a spatial strategy—challenging fixed notions of boundary, permanence, and enclosure. In this way, the piece becomes both a model and a metaphor: for buildings that breathe, and boundaries that bend.

Construction patterns for the inflatable garment, mapping how form is guided by seam and fold





This piece began as a series of sketches, material tests, and air experiments. Working with duck canvas and a fish tank air pump to test how fabric would inflate, drape, and collapse. The seams were carefully designed — both structurally and visually — to guide airflow and form.

Folding became both a construction technique and a conceptual framework: a way to explore how softness might resist the static, and how tension might create new spatial possibilities. 

As the piece came to life, it behaved less like a model and more like a body— breathing, shifting, resisting formality. 

Each test was an encounter with unpredictability, a reminder that responsive architecture might begin with materials that change form.