Emily Zhang

MDes Interior Architecture

Soft Bodies, Hard Frames

Silk is delicate yet strong, responsive to light and air, and dependent on living processes and careful labor. These qualities position it not only as a material, but as an instrument capable of organizing space. Rather than serving as surface or decoration, silk can generate enclosure, movement, and environmental conditions.

For centuries, courtyard houses in the Jiangnan region evolved alongside sericulture, forming environments attuned to the needs of silk production. Courtyards, screened openings, flexible interiors, and canal oriented layouts supported both living and making. Architecture was not separate from silk, but structured around its cultivation and handling. Within stable timber frames, soft and permeable environments accommodated its sensitivity and the domestic labor, largely carried out by women.

This thesis proposes a contemporary silk showroom as a testing ground to reinterpret this relationship. The project is not a neutral container, but a series of spatial interventions generated through the behavior of silk. While the existing structure provides a stable framework, silk shapes enclosure, circulation, light, and thresholds through draping, suspension, permeability, and gathering. Processes such as stretching, hanging, folding, and layering are translated into architectural operations.

By revisiting this history, the project suggests that softness can reorganize structure, that material behavior can inform spatial design, and that relationships between craft and architecture can be reactivated as contemporary strategies.