Knitted Facade

For the renovation of the VAVO school building in Tilburg, the architect Mariette Adriaanssen wanted to design a characteristic facade with a strong link to the history of the Tilburg textile industry.  When the architect saw Petra Vonk's work exhibited in the textile Museum in Tilburg she new what to do. Together they came to the design of the architectural knitted façade. The knitted fabric was poured into a composite plate; in doing so they created a unique product that also serves as solar protection.

By designing a fabric with different densities, we created more and less translucency parts of the facade panel. The lace knit is cast in composite, making it suitable for use as a outdoor panel.

The exterior wall on the street side of the school is its calling card, so as a wink to Tilburg's history as textile center,. Outside this creates an eye-catching pattern while inside it creates a classroom with a spiritual and introverted character. This delivers a virtually closed facade, which allows a special, filtered light into the building.

For this project we created a textile by using a very thick yarn. This resulted in a nice relief on the composite cladding façade with embedded textile structure surface which is beautifully visible when it hits sunshine.

Materials: RAFICLAD composite panels by Holland Composite. Architect: Mariette Adriaanssen Building: School for VAVO, ROC Tilburg, 2012