Deleuze and Guattari describe this distinction by way of analogy. Fabric would stand for striated space, whereas felt would stand for smooth space. In contrast to fabric, felt contains a multiplicity of fibers matted together, but none of them connected into any overarching structure. Fabric follows a regular pattern, and is precisely delineated, whereas “felt is a supple solid product that proceeds altogether differently, as an anti-fabric. It implies no separation of threads, no intertwining, only an entanglement of fibers obtained by fulling.”
Neil Leach, Camouflage
This blurriness is in contrast to the discrete articulation of structure and cladding that has emerged from the mass standardization of modernism. Within these composite fibrous assemblages there is no distinction between skin and structure, instead every fiber operates structurally within a redundant, highly ornamental assemblage.
Roland Snooks, Kokuggia
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With the invention of technologies such as the electron microscope, our understanding of matter has shifted from assumptions regarding the monolithic nature of material to that of material as the accretion of high populations of micro-fibers – or fibrous assemblages. The micro-behavior of multi-agent systems enables architectural matter to be considered and designed in similar ways. If systems of behavioral formation focus design decisions and matter at the smallest scale, a critical decision is the scale that generative architectural design strategies focus. If modernity was focused on the assemblage of discrete mass standardized elements (steel section beams, mullions, glazing units, prefabricated concrete panels etc), a design process focused on fibrous assemblages would have to consider the individual element to be at the sub material level – or at least at the level of the elements that assemble into composite materials.
Fibrous assemblages are structurally non-linear. Rather than defined by a priori hierarchies of primary, secondary and tertiary elements, hierarchies emerge from within the non-linear operation of fibrous assemblages as variation in intensity, capacity and density. The blurring between systems, such as structure and ornament, extends to a blurring of classification of geometry. Composite fibrous assemblages resist being categorized as either surfaces or strands. Strands within fibrous assemblages bundle and weave to form surfaces, while surfaces delaminate into strands.
Fibrous Assemblage
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References:
Material Systems
