Off the CuffOFF THE CUFF

A contemporary folly in the context of monumental classicism, Off the Cuff is a roof canopy made of three hundred pairs of jeans designed to span the courtyard of Palazzo Litta, a Baroque building in Milan that was completed in 1761. Historically, the space has mediated between the public and private realms, a legacy that drove the concept of using jeans as a construction material: the denim pays homage to the courtyard’s humble history. As an architectural figure, the net springs across the square court, describing a collective ethos and stitching together two vital scales of urban life, the individual and the collective. The canopy filters direct sunlight and holds a transparent membrane over part of the space to keep out the rain for outdoor events.

The canopy deploys the jeans as a ready-made, translating the garment from the context of the human body to the context of an architectural module. The design exploits the structural logic of the jeans, using areas where the fabric is reinforced to create a tensile, catenary diagrid that spans the open courtyard: the jeans are connected from waist to waist and from cuff to cuff.

The net has a hyperbolic paraboloid geometry with two high points and two low points, differentiating each side of the courtyard. The tensile surface is suspended within a rigid steel frame. The jean net is connected to the anchor frame by a set of Kevlar ropes, allowing for tension adjustments as the denim tightens and loosens in response to weather conditions.

Off the Cuff was created in collaboration with structural engineers Maco Technology and Thornton Tomasetti. It was commissioned by DAMN Magazine for Salone del Mobile 2017.