Pneumatic Skins in Architecture. Sustainable Trends in Low Positive Pressure Inflatable Systems

The research has been focused on the review and critical analysis of the architectural low positive pressure inflatable systems, since the first patents to the most recent trends. While first pneumatic buildings were focused on airsupported structures, large volume of inflatable examples has been built in the last decade, favored by the improvement of transparent, high-strength and low maintenance new membrane materials. The study of more than 400 representative example shows that new sustainable strategies are being developed in order to take advantage of the flexibility, lightness and climatic adaptive properties of inflatable skins.