Glass Weaving
Glass Weaving from Sng Poh Liang
Glass Weaving

Year 3 project in the University of Hong Kong.

Glass is usually perceived to be brittle and fragile, as well as being weak in tension and strong in compression. The experiment here seeks to redefine glass as a material. What if it is not totally transparent? What if it is part of a tensile structure instead? What if it is not just there to cover up an opening?

The final product here tries to show that glass need not be transparent and brittle. Using fibreglass as a tensile material, an original weaving + production technique to produce different variations and possibilities is conceived to experiment with its potential.

The entire project was divided into 4 stages: 1: idea and choice of material; 2: techniques to deal with the material; 3: prototyping and modulation; and 4: modules for possibilities.

A weaving method for fibreglass.
Very first initial hands-on on the possibility of using fibreglass as a tensile material and doing more than what normal glass does.
Playing with screens. Open and close. Visibility.
Working on how to open and close.
Initial drawings.
Studying the technique of handling fibreglass. It was also felt that the frame shown in the initial drawings should be done without to focus entirely on the material itself. Therefore, explorations were done to see if it is possible to have fibreglass on its own. 2 methods were derived.
Method 1 uses a more traditional approach with a weaving device.
Method 2 uses a mould for fibreglass to take shape. Eventually method 1 was adopted for further studies as it is more of a ground-up approach with many possible variations as compared to method 2 which has limited configurations on its own.
Here is the part which I feel more explorations should be done. Different modules for different possibilities were explored and what would have been better is to explore possible joints between modules and examples of joining with certain building components.
The weaving device.
Panels.
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Glass Weaving

Year 3 project in the University of Hong Kong.

Glass is usually perceived to be brittle and fragile, as well as being weak in tension and strong in compression. The experiment here seeks to redefine glass as a material. What if it is not totally transparent? What if it is part of a tensile structure instead? What if it is not just there to cover up an opening?

The final product here tries to show that glass need not be transparent and brittle. Using fibreglass as a tensile material, an original weaving + production technique to produce different variations and possibilities is conceived to experiment with its potential.

The entire project was divided into 4 stages: 1: idea and choice of material; 2: techniques to deal with the material; 3: prototyping and modulation; and 4: modules for possibilities.

Sng Poh Liang
Architecture graduate, lover of art + all sorts of design.... Singapore, Singapore