The T-Umbrella pavilion is a lightweight structure serving as a demonstrator for a curved folding system, materialized from thin fabric stiffened with straight inflatable pouches along the rulings of the underlying surface. The project is designed as a cantilevering structure, based on a single column.
The column is surrounded with an inflatable seating structure that covers a sandbag foundation.
The entire structure consists of one continuous folded strip of material that can be fabricated and pre-assembled in a flat state. This flexible and flat-folded strip can be deployed into its final shape, where it will form a closed loop that will self-stabilize the structure. To reduce the weight and the transportation size, the pavilion Will be materialized from four sheets of a thin textile that becomes a semi-rigid (orthotropic) bendable entity after inflating integrated air-pouches. The individual sheets will be transported on site and pre-assembled with zippers to a folded package before inflating and folding into its final three-dimensional state. There is no known structure fabricated and materialized in this particular technique to the authors.
The structure will have approximately 5m diameter and 3 meters height.
