Cultivated Woven Hybrid for Urban Cooling
The project Matters of Shade investigates how lightweight textile and structural systems might support biologically active forms of shade and cooling in urban environments.
Vienna is increasingly affected by urban heat stress, particularly in dense and highly sealed neighbourhoods where public space offers little thermal relief. While long-term climate adaptation strategies are indispensable, their effect unfolds slowly; technical cooling solutions frequently remain detached from ecological processes and from the lived, spatial, and aesthetic experience of public space.
Matters of Shade addresses this gap by investigating how lightweight textile and structural systems might support biologically active forms of shade and cooling in urban environments, exploring whether textile-based assemblies can function as cultivated host systems for locally adapted plant species, enabling spatial adaptation that is lightweight, reversible, and ecologically engaged.
Rather than understanding shade as a static byproduct of a fixed architectural object, the project approaches it as a living, temporal condition shaped by material behaviour, moisture, growth, exposure, weathering, and care. Textiles and lightweight structures are repositioned not as solely technical membranes, but as matrices that can host, support, and guide living processes over time.
The project will be carried out by a consortium consisting of the Departments of Building Construction, Digital Simulation and Textiles – Free Applied and Experimental Artistic Design, integrating international experts in the field. Situated at the intersection of architecture, textile experimentation, and artistic research, Matters of Shade is conceived as an early-stage seed project, establishing the conceptual, material, and methodological basis for future larger-scale research. Embedded in Vienna’s civic and institutional landscape, it develops in direct relation to specific sites and communities, repositioning urban cooling not as a technical optimization problem, but as a spatial, ecological, and artistic research in which cultivation, materiality, and public relevance are inseparably entangled.
Matters of Shade reframes shade not as a fixed architectural product but as a cultivated, fluctuating condition emerging through material behaviour, biological growth, and seasonal change, opening new ground between ecological urbanism, textile research, and spatial design.
The project establishes a collaborative experimental framework between Building Construction, Digital Simulation, and Textile Design at die Angewandte. The goal — testing textile assemblies as biologically active cooling infrastructure, confirms a new approach to urban spatial adaptation. Developed samples and methodologies serve as case studies for future larger-scale research and funding.
Contact: Camille Breuil
Project lead: Camille Breuil
Project partners: Ebba Fransén Waldhör, Clemens Preisinger
Project Start and Duration: 1.1.2027 – 30.06.2027, 6 Months
Funding: PORT 2026