Techtextil 2017 addresses architects, construction engineers and planners
Buildtech applications have much to offer for construction using fibres
From textile-based fascia panels over the Bosporus to the German Future Prize 2016 for carbon concrete and the highest glass-fibre membrane project in the world. The forthcoming Techtextil trade fair (9 to 12 May 2017) brings together all these threads featuring the latest innovations in construction. Werner Sobek is in no doubt, “it is almost impossible to imagine any new engineering approach to lightweight construction and design that would not require textile-based materials.” Sobek is a star architect, currently contracted by the industrial group ThyssenKrupp to apply a glass-fibre wrap to an almost 250 metres high elevator testing tower in Rottweil, Baden Württemberg, which also happens to be the world’s highest membrane project. Designed to reduce the tower’s warming, the spiral-shaped fibre wrap has an irregular surface that dampens wind flow and so reduces vibration. It is also designed to catch the eye, of course.
Verseidag supplies the necessary special fabric. The textile manufacturer from Krefeld and Techtextil exhibitor is just like any supplier of building materials for Sobek. “Cooperation with textile companies like Verseidag is part of my everyday working life, just as cooperation with steel or concrete suppliers”, declares the building engineer, who embedded textile construction at Techtextil back in the early nineties. And another textile construction topic also started at that time and will be one of the trade fair’s focal points – textile reinforced concrete.
‘Staying’ power
One of the first research projects for textile-reinforced concrete began at the Technical University of Dresden in 1992.
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