Texas hold 'um

摘要

On a balmy Tuesday evening in late October, three dozen or so enthusiastic architects, architecture students, faculty, and tensile structure professionals assembled on a campus lawn in front of the University of Texas, San Antonio College of Architecture (UTSA). The occasion was the dedication of two student-designed and -made tensile structures that serve as the front and back entrance canopies to the architecture school's newly remodeled downtown building. A rather mundane-looking office building before the student additions, the architecture building now distinctly broadcasts to the city and passersby that creative, challenging and stimulating things happen within. Thus began a two-day intense course in the exploration of fabric as a building material at IFAI's pre-convention conference called Fabric Structures 2005.