sollertia | The secrets of textile architecture

The Montreal firm Sollertia designs, manufactures and installs architectural arrangements made of tensioned membranes – a technique that is little known here. She is the one who gave concrete form to the sinuous walls of the redesigned Biodôme.

Marc Tison
The Press

It is the opposite of Christo’s draperies on the great monuments: the canvas architecture of Sollertia is a permanent constituent part of the work.

Witness the milky sinuosities of the interior walls of the Biodôme’s atrium, designed by the architectural firm Kanva and realized by Sollertia.

Their membranes, as if frozen in their undulation, are stretched between triangulated beams which wind, invisible, one on the floor and the other 15 meters above the ground.

With approximately 25 employees, Sollertia is a “textile architecture design and production office”, according to the description given by its president, Claude Le Bel.

It was to implement it that he founded Sollertia in May 2000. “I wanted to start a business, to have a team of my own to do things that others don’t do. »

He was until then technical director and chief editor at Cirque du Soleil, where he had learned and mastered this ancient sub-specialty of textile architecture: capitals, that is to say a “membrane which becomes a building in less than two days”, in his words.

The director of design and innovation at Sollertia, Nathalie Lortie, joined him in 2004. Holder of a baccalaureate in architecture and fascinated for a long time by organic forms, she sees in membranes a “means to shape the space in a free way”.

Please note, this is not a simple covering material – tapestry or wall hanging – but a veil stretched over a light structure, which will form a wall, a wall, a roof, a screen, a shelter. .

Web stability is produced by the opposing curvatures of hyperbolic paraboloids – the shape of Pringles potato chips, for example.

In the company’s workshop, where models and prototypes are made, Nathalie Lortie has a series of samples felt that vary in thickness, resistance and opacity, from fine nets like mosquito nets to the solid membranes that will form roofs.

Architectural membranes, generally reinforcements of plastic fibers coated on the surface, are still not very common here, “but we are not into new materials”, insists Claude Le Bon. With facilities dating back 40 years, “it’s starting to be well known and tested”.

The life of the membrane will vary from 5 to 65 years, depending on its type and use.

Curves dictated by nature

Sollertia designs the membrane, its tensioning system and the structure that supports it, manufactures it and installs it.

“These materials and techniques are not taught in Canada, neither in architecture nor in engineering, at least not according to the latest news,” points out Claude Le Bel.

The membrane is maintained at its start and end points, but between the two, its course is dictated by physics.

“What people don’t know is that you can’t force these shapes,” he explains. “The web will take its natural shape”, like a spider’s web.

All the art consists in designing the structures which will produce the curves corresponding to the concept. Because these membranes are not stretchy, the curves are given by assembling widths cut to the right dimensions, like a garment.

Sollertia designers use specialized software to model the shapes in 3D. They draw the cutting plans for the widths and the technical drawings of the tortuous metal structures that stretch them.

Before these digital tools, says Claude Le Bel, the creators used small structures made of pins dipped in soapy water, to observe what shapes the bubbles took.

They can also form perfectly flat surfaces, as she demonstrates with membranes stretched over frames.

The variety of current projects reflects the versatility of the material.

“Currently, we have a shade cloth on a cruise ship, a pier kit for the Port of Quebec that we are re-canvassing, an entrance for the Grand Théâtre de Québec – as a more artistic marketing gesture –, the facade of the Péribonka library…”, enumerates Claude Le Bel.

Sollertia can commit to the project from the design phase, on the basis of a simple sketch, but the concept is sometimes largely stopped when the firm is called upon to intervene. This was the case for Kanva and the interior redevelopment project of the Biodôme, inaugurated in August 2020.

Fusion and confection

In a room adjacent to the workshop, Sollertia assembles the membranes it designs. It is forbidden to set foot on the floor without wearing blue textile slippers – foot masks – as a matter of not soiling it. Because it is on the ground that the carefully cut widths are placed, as they are assembled.

They are welded with a radio frequency device, which slides along a table about twenty meters long. The frequency, duration and pressure are adjusted to the type of membrane and its thickness. “I have to find the recipe, depending on the materials,” says team leader Nicolas Labonté.

The social membrane

After sustainable wrapping, sustainable development: Claude Le Bel makes every effort to recover cutting scraps. His team has designed and manufactured a whole series of products to reuse them: lunch bags, cross-body briefcases… “It’s our way of reducing our footprint on the environment”, he says. He makes his social membrane vibrate.