Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Built Environ.

Sec. Sustainable Design and Construction

This article is part of the Research TopicAdaptive Building Envelopes and Renewable Energy StrategiesView all 6 articles

CNC-Knitted Textiles for Adaptive Building Envelopes: Material Programming and Interdisciplinary Design Strategies

Provisionally accepted
Martin TamkeMartin Tamke1*Alessandra ZanelliAlessandra Zanelli2Martina MottaMartina Motta3Diego DaniDiego Dani3Michele FumagalliMichele Fumagalli3Christian Renan Endara VargasChristian Renan Endara Vargas2Luca MedioliLuca Medioli2Shahriar AkbariShahriar Akbari1
  • 1Det Kongelige Akademi - Arkitektur, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 2Politecnico di Milano Dipartimento di Architettura Ingegneria delle Costruzioni e Ambiente Costruito, Milan, Italy
  • 3Politecnico di Milano Dipartimento di Design, Milan, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

This study explores the architectural potential of CNC-knitted textiles as adaptive building envelopes, highlighting their programmability at the stitch level and capacity for environmental responsiveness. Through a research-by-design approach, the investigation integrates architectural, textile, and engineering disciplines to develop rib-based knitted structures using sustainable mono-material yarns, that can replace currently used fossil fuel based elastomeric yarns. These textiles exhibit reversible elasticity and dual-state behavior, enabling dynamic changes in color, transparency, and porosity throughout the adaptation cycle. The CNC-knitting process supports seamless, form-fitting fabrication with minimal waste. Its speed in production allows for novel interdisciplinary collaborations through iterative prototyping and performance-specific design. The Manta-Ray prototype demonstrates finally the application of knitted facades in solar shading, using active bending with minimal actuators. The research outlines the technical and collaborative frameworks required for transitioning from experimental prototypes to deployable systems, positioning CNC-knitted textiles as a viable strategy for expressive, responsive, and materially efficient façade design.

Keywords: adaptive architecture, CNC knit, Elastic membrane material, Interdisciplinary methods, material design

Received: 03 Nov 2025; Accepted: 29 Dec 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Tamke, Zanelli, Motta, Dani, Fumagalli, Renan Endara Vargas, Medioli and Akbari. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Martin Tamke

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material