Do membrane structures belong to low-tech or high-tech products?
The concept of low-tech is mostly understood as the counterpart to high-tech and refers to technology which is developed under the aspects of easy function, easy production, easy service, robustness and easy maintenance. In most cases low-tech-solutions bear a huge amount of intelligence deriving from long-lasting processes of trial and error. Therefore the majority of our structural systems is based on low-tech considerations. Building with textiles is one of them.
This paper looks into the question above by the means of the realized, experimental structure “cut.enoid.tower”[*] a complex system of combined structural principles. The three aspects – Irregularity as a result of combined structural systems, Irregularity in detail as a result of geometrical necessity and Irregularity as a feature of architectural complexity – spanning from the global design approach to detailing, general rules (low-tech) used tools for formfinding (high-tech) and the final result (low-tech) are highlighted
