USA Research Efforts

Research in the USA has been pretty much confined to architectural students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Norwich University. At MIT Mr. Shuji Suzumori is pursuing a Master of Architecture with a thesis topic in textile formwork. And, at The School of Architecture & Art, Norwich University assistant professor Eleanor D'Aponte and her students have conducted two workshops exploring “Innovations in Fabric Formed Concrete”. These workshops were held at and co-sponsored by Yestermorrow Design/Build School located in Warren, VT. They took place during the summers of 2009 and 2010.

Research into the engineering aspects of fabric-formed concrete has been done by Robert Schmitz while pursuing a Masters in Structural Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering located in Milwaukee, WI [1]. His research interest in fabric formwork comes as a result of work he completed for his Master’s degree and his desire to see this unique method of forming concrete brought into mainstream construction practice. See USA_Schmitz for a paper entitled “Fabric-Formed Concrete Panel Design” written for and presented at the 17th Analysis and Computation Specialty Conference held in conjunction with the 2006 ASCE Structures Congress held in St. Louis, MO [2].

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[1] Schmitz, R., (2004), “Fabric Formed Concrete Panel Design” Master’s thesis, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202.
[2] Schmitz, R., (2006), “Fabric Formed Concrete Panel Design”, Proceedings of the 17th Analysis and Computation Specialty Conference on the 2006 Structures Congress CDROM published by ASCE, ISBN 0-7844-0878-5

Fabric-Formed Concrete