Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance [Hardcover]

Matilda McQuaid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2005

Stronger, faster, lighter, safer, smarterthese are the textiles of tomorrow. From the carbon-fiber composite bicycle frame to the cardiac constraint sock and the Mars Pathfinder landing airbags, material innovations surround us. Our landscape, our buildings, our vehicles, our clothes, and our bodies all benefit from these highly engineered performance textiles.

Featuring examples of fully realized products from all classes of technical textilesarchitectural, product design, apparel, medicine, transportation, aerospace, industry, and the environmentExtreme Textiles highlights successful collaborations between design, industry, and science. Large, full-color illustrations and essays by some of today's most influential designers and scientists trace the extraordinary developments made in textiles over the last twenty years and suggest what is to come.

Tradition, technology, beauty, and strength are joined together in the materials and products presented in this volume. Whether exploring space, running a marathon, or fashioning the latest trend, we will be inspired by these extreme textiles every day.

Extreme Textiles accompanies the exhibition of the same name at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum beginning in April 2005.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Matilda McQuaid is the exhibitions curator and head of the Textiles Department at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Formerly of the Museum of Modern Art, she has curated more than thirty exhibitions and has authored several books.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press (June 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156898507X
• ISBN-13: 978-1568985077
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #503,669 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whether it's architecture or art, students at the college level will find Extreme Textiles both accessible and detailed, February 3, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance (Hardcover)

Innovative textiles offer some of the most intriguing design options today, but few design or textile coverages discuss extreme textiles in such depth and detail. Matilda McQuaid's Extreme Textiles: Designing For High Performance surveys engineered fabrics and their radical uses, from cardiac constraint socks to airbags and transportation textiles. Even buildings use these extreme textiles in construction, and Extreme Textiles surveys all these uses in a blend of startling full-page illustrations and discussions of fiber properties, performance standards, and unique uses. Whether it's architecture or art, students at the college level will find Extreme Textiles both accessible and detailed.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Report on Recent Progress in New Materials., August 31, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance (Hardcover)

There has been tremendous progress made in materials science in the last twenty years or so. And a surprising amount of that work has been in materials used in fabrics. Fabrics, including rigid items like fiberglass or carbon fiber items, have been designed to handle a wide variety of tasks that previously either couldn't be done (the bouncing satellite on Mars), or were much more expensive, or were performed less adequately (sporting equipment).

This book is a review of these advances. Ms. McQuaid is at the National Design Museum where she oversees a collection of more than thirty thousand textiles produced over 23 centuries. She has written much of the book, but has gotten contributions from a series of other textile experts from London, Canada, and of course the United States. The book is profusely illustrated to serve as an idea book of the types of items that can be manufactured with the new fabrics.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome!!!, January 15, 2007

By 

V. Blessing "Aggie girl" (College Station, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance (Hardcover)

This book is AWESOME!!
I love it, it is very educational!
I used it to write a presentation on Techno Textiles, and I got so much info out of it!