Each year, more than two million Muslims visit the Holy Mosque at Mecca for three days and nights. Mina Valley in Saudi Arabia is one of the stations housing pilgrims, but a 1997 fire during Hajj destroyed thousands of cotton tents used for shelter there. Saudi authorities are rebuilding the Mina Valley tent city of [...]

Indiana International Airport’s recent renovations included a five-story, 2.5-million-square-foot parking facility topped with helix-shaped canopies designed to emulate the spirals in the ramp. Birdair Inc., Buffalo, N.Y., used approximately 75,000 square feet of PTFE material to form two canopies for the ramps and a central atrium. An architecture consortium selected the fabric membrane for its [...]

The Airstream recreational vehicle is a heavyweight icon of road travel, with emphasis on the “heavy.” In designing its new 17- and 22-foot Safari Sport RVs, Airstream aimed for a design lightweight enough to be pulled by a standard SUV or V6 minivan. The company looked at everything, including the awnings, and fabricator Zip Dee, [...]

The meat and cheese counters at Kaiser’s Tengelmann supermarkets in Germany close at 8:00 p.m., but customers shop until 9:00 p.m. or later and expect service. The grocery retailer decided to manage expectations, installing digitally printed vertical screens that lower from closed boxes on the ceiling to signal that chilled fresh food counters are closed [...]

Rugged meta-aramid fibers, all-temperature protection and fire resistance sold the French Army on protective clothing from the Kermel® Co., Comar Cedex, France. The first battalions will be equipped with Kermel’s V50 summer and VMC40 winter camouflage battledress in late 2008 following successful field testing. The decision was made in context of France’s FELIN® Project, development [...]

New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) brings prefabricated houses into focus in its new exhibition, “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.” Among five houses built in the MoMA’s outdoor space is the five-story Cellophane House made of transparent, recyclable materials designed by KieranTimberlake Associates LLP, Philadelphia, Pa. The outer walls are NextGen SmartWrap™, [...]

[ Eventscape Inc. ] Toronto, Ont., Canada This fabric structure, nicknamed the “squid booth,” was designed to reach out to architects, designers and other potential clients, drawing them in with its tentacles so that they could see and experience Eventscape’s capabilities in fabrication and design. The connections and intricacies of the joints of the tentacles [...]

[ Transformit ] Gorham, Maine, U.S.A.. The objective of this display was to visually demonstrate that Verizon as a company was about to “take off” (the telecommunications giant had recently acquired MCI). In keeping with this theme, the spherical structure featured fabric “wings,” and the floor of the booth was curved in two directions like [...]