Since the advent of the industrial revolution man has become increasingly detached from the idea of making and the processes associated with it. Today’s society is a consumer driven one dependant on machinery as a means to an end. This attitude has lead to industry becoming an exploitative entity that rapidly becomes obsolete due to the static nature of its program. A shift in mindset is required to create healthy environments that balance the acts of being and doing. At the Tswaing crater, the salt and soda reserves in the crater basin were mined and exploited until they were completely depleted. The factory ruins now stand alone as silent witnesses to the downfall of a doomed industry, consumed by nature and ravaged by time. Although the process has long vanished from memory, the scars of industry are still visible on the landscape, providing an opportunity for a new layer to be woven into the fabric of the site. To respect its history, a new, craft-orientated industrial intervention is incorporated within the existing ruins, which allows visitors to get acquainted with the process of making and allows workers to experience the ephemeral qualities of the site. The end goal is to encourage man to dwell within his surroundings blurring the line between being and doing. The intervention is a fabric dyeing workshop where sheets of fabric add a new layer of colour to the landscape. The fabric is sold to the public on site and training is also provided for the public to educate people about the craft of fabric dyeing. The new process works with the natural surroundings, not looking to exploit the resources as before, but instead looking to add value to people’s lives through learning and experience - and not simply creating an economically viable product. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

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The fabric of the city. A folded roof plane. Textile brick. The density of a weave. A fabric's structure. A hem's meter. The selvage. The fringe. Weaving. The connections drawn between textiles and architecture are limitless. Can a building and the processes that occur within it stitch together the holes in a city? The project explores the relationship between weaving and architecture. Can all aspects of the building - from spatial sequences and circulation to structure and skin - be woven? / Master of Architecture

The importance of automating the garment manufacturing process has been understood since the early 1980s. However, in spite of millions of dollars spent on research, three decades later, the industry is still far from achieving a fully autonomous process. Previous work on fabric control in automated sewing focused on the control of only a single sheet of fabric using an industrial manipulator with an overhead vision system. These methods did not meet the accuracy and robustness requirements of the sewing process with respect to fabric position and fabric tension. To address these issues, a new method for fabric control in automated sewing is described. It uses the current feed mechanism on sewing machines, feed dogs, but modifies them to be servo-controlled. These servo controlled actuators, servo dogs, individually control two sheets of fabric before the fabric reaches the needle and during the sewing process. The servo dogs actuate the fabric 180o out of phase with the sewing needle, providing incremental control of the fabric when the needle is out of the fabric. To achieve this type of control successfully for automated sewing, the servo dogs have been designed for short displacement, high acceleration motions using a cable drive system powered by voice coil motors. Feedback of fabric position has been determined to be necessary and is to be provided by a thread-tracking vision system. This thesis outlines the general design of the system and discusses a prototype used to validate the design, and describes experiments performed to examine how the fabric will behave with the use of this type of actuation method.

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Concrete has many advantages as a low cost and sustainable material. However, more than 5% of the planet’s total carbon emissions are associated with the production of cement, which, in fact, is predominantly due to the large volume of concrete used worldwide. It is known that traditionally designed concrete structures typically use more material than structurally required and, therefore, an important question is whether material demand can be reduced through structural optimisation. A major drawback from optimised design, however, is the cost and complexity of producing conventional rigid moulds. Fabric formwork is emerging as a new method for construction, gaining popularity among architects and engineers for the opportunity to build unique forms and to shape concrete elements efficiently. Porous fabrics, acting as controlled permeability formwork, also have proven effect on the durability characteristics of concrete. While fabric formwork has a profound potential to change the appearance of concrete structures, the shapes cast in fabrics are not defined in advance and have been often created unintentionally. The design of load-bearing reinforced concrete structures, however, requires accurate form-prediction and construction methods for securing steel reinforcement inside flexible fabrics, which presents a number of constructability challenges. For example, cover formers cannot be used to ensure adequate thickness of protective cover, inevitably affecting the acceptance of such structures in practice. This research has demonstrated that non-corrodable FRP reinforcement can be incorporated more easily than steel bars in fabric-formed concrete due to its light weight and flexibility, while it is possible to ensure ductility of such structures through confinement of concrete using FRP helices. A novel splayed anchorage system has been developed to provide end anchorage for optimised sections where standard bends or hooks cannot fit. This work also provides an experimentally verified methodology and guidance for the design and optimisation of fabric-formed elements.

Esta tese trata das mudanças ocorridas no processo de urbanização no município de Campinas, sobretudo a partir dos anos 1970, e em especial no eixo da Rodovia Dom Pedro I. Essas mudanças consistem na formação de um novo padrão de urbanização em escala regional, que está intimamente relacionado ao surgimento de novos padrões de tecidos urbanos. Podemos dizer que diversos fatores propiciaram a formação desse novo padrão de urbanização regional, entre eles: a implantação de novas redes de infraestrutura de transporte, abastecimento e comunicações, novas legislações ambientais e de parcelamento do solo, mudanças econômicas nas esferas da produção e do consumo, além de mudanças culturais. Como reflexo destas transformações, verificamos no tecido urbano o surgimento e difusão de condomínios residenciais horizontais, loteamentos unifamiliares fechados, shopping centers, centros empresariais, loteamentos e condomínios fechados industrais. Esta tese procura mostrar que, ao contrário do que se costuma afirmar, o surgimento dessas tipologias está menos relacionado à violência urbana, ou a simples cópia de um modelo estrangeiro de urbanização, e mais ligado a esse novo padrão de urbanização em escala regional que já vinha ocorrendo muito antes do acirramento das tensões sociais ou da abertura da economia brasileira em meados dos anos 1990. / This thesis deals with the changes in the process of urban growth in the city of Campinas, from the year 1970 onwards, more specifically in the areas surrounding the axis of Highway Dom Pedro I. These changes consist in the formation of a new pattern of urban growth in a regional scale, which is closely related to the emergence of new patterns of urban fabric. We can say that several factors provided the formation of this new pattern of regional urban growth, including: the deployment of new networks of transportation, supply and communications infrastructure, new environmental and urban laws, economic and cultural changes in the spheres of production and consumption. As a result, we notice the appearance of air condos, gated communities, business parks, shopping malls and closed industrial enclaves in the urban fabric. This thesis intends to explicit that, contrary to what is often said, the emergence of these new typologies has more factors involved in its making than a mere reaction to urban violence or the reproduction of a foreign model of urbanization. This new pattern of regional urban growth has been occurring long before the rise of social tensions or the opening of the Brazilian market in the mid 1990s.

Esta tese trata das mudanças ocorridas no processo de urbanização no município de Campinas, sobretudo a partir dos anos 1970, e em especial no eixo da Rodovia Dom Pedro I. Essas mudanças consistem na formação de um novo padrão de urbanização em escala regional, que está intimamente relacionado ao surgimento de novos padrões de tecidos urbanos. Podemos dizer que diversos fatores propiciaram a formação desse novo padrão de urbanização regional, entre eles: a implantação de novas redes de infraestrutura de transporte, abastecimento e comunicações, novas legislações ambientais e de parcelamento do solo, mudanças econômicas nas esferas da produção e do consumo, além de mudanças culturais. Como reflexo destas transformações, verificamos no tecido urbano o surgimento e difusão de condomínios residenciais horizontais, loteamentos unifamiliares fechados, shopping centers, centros empresariais, loteamentos e condomínios fechados industrais. Esta tese procura mostrar que, ao contrário do que se costuma afirmar, o surgimento dessas tipologias está menos relacionado à violência urbana, ou a simples cópia de um modelo estrangeiro de urbanização, e mais ligado a esse novo padrão de urbanização em escala regional que já vinha ocorrendo muito antes do acirramento das tensões sociais ou da abertura da economia brasileira em meados dos anos 1990. / This thesis deals with the changes in the process of urban growth in the city of Campinas, from the year 1970 onwards, more specifically in the areas surrounding the axis of Highway Dom Pedro I. These changes consist in the formation of a new pattern of urban growth in a regional scale, which is closely related to the emergence of new patterns of urban fabric. We can say that several factors provided the formation of this new pattern of regional urban growth, including: the deployment of new networks of transportation, supply and communications infrastructure, new environmental and urban laws, economic and cultural changes in the spheres of production and consumption. As a result, we notice the appearance of air condos, gated communities, business parks, shopping malls and closed industrial enclaves in the urban fabric. This thesis intends to explicit that, contrary to what is often said, the emergence of these new typologies has more factors involved in its making than a mere reaction to urban violence or the reproduction of a foreign model of urbanization. This new pattern of regional urban growth has been occurring long before the rise of social tensions or the opening of the Brazilian market in the mid 1990s.