A Case for Lace

Textiles and architecture share a long, intertwined history from the earliest enclosures to contemporary high-tech tensile structures. In the Four Elements of Architecture, Gottfried Semper (2010) posited wickerwork and carpet enclosures to be the essential origins of architectural space. More recently, architectural designers are capitalizing on the characteristics of textiles that are difficult or impossible to reproduce with other material systems: textiles are pliable, scalable, and materially efficient. As industrial knitting machines join robotic systems in architecture schools with fabrication- forward agendas, much of the recent developments in textile-based projects make use of knitting. In this paper, we propose an alternative textile technique, lacemaking, for architectural fabrication. We present a method for translating traditional lacemaking techniques to an architectural scale and explore its relative advantages over other textiles. In particular, we introduce bobbin lace and describe its steps both in traditional production and at an architectural scale. We use the unique properties of bobbin lace to form workflows for fabrication and computational analysis. An example of computational analysis demonstrates the ability to optimize lace-based designs towards particular labor objectives. We discuss opportunities for automation and consider the broader implications of understanding a material system relative to the cost of labor to produce designs using it.