The development of lightweight membrane constructions and the role of the European association TensiNet

Abstract

In 2004, Kurt W. Forster, curator of the International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, in his opening speech, addressed the fundamental changes taking place in contemporary architecture, both in the field of design theory and practice, and in the use of new construction technologies, asserting that buildings are literally “made of surfaces”. Surfaces that are transformed into interfaces, osmotic membranes that regulate complex flows, from the environmental ones (thermal, light, acoustic) to the material ones, up to the figurative, informative and communicative ones that characterize the image of contemporary spaces.