The role of textiles in sustainable South African residential architecture

Abstract

Sustainable architecture prescribes the conscious consideration and active contemplation of ways of meeting the housing needs of humans while attempting simultaneously to prevent our consumption patterns from exceeding the resources at our disposal. Sustainability in the built environment is infinitely complex as the very nature of modern architecture is based upon the extraction and exploitation of finite natural resources to feed a linear system ultimately ending in the depletion of those resources and the destruction of the ecosystem from which they are excavated. When considering built environments, the most visible and measurable components of any sustainable design is its ecological and economic sustainability. Social sustainability, on the other hand is of an unquantifiable nature, making it a most contentious topic in design and development discourse. This thesis uses a systems approach to sustainable architecture as a lens to focus on the practical applications of structural concepts made possible by the integration of textiles in the built environment and examines possibilities of adapting and incorporating vernacular and low-tech textile-based construction methods into contemporary sustainable architecture. More specifically, it explores the possibilities of using architextiles, or textiles in the building industry, as a vehicle for advancing sustainable development within the emerging economy of South Africa with its unambiguous diversity in all three bottom lines of sustainability; environment (ecology, resources, geography, built environment), society (community, culture, politics) and economy (employment, wealth, finance, industry, infrastructure, consumer behaviour).