It’s about time.
Architects can burn hours researching manufacturers and specifying custom parameters to set a firm basis of design, only to watch that intent soften into a loose suggestion after handoff.
In fact, the rise of rapid design and automated production, which promised more site-specific facades, tends to produce one of two outcomes: Highly coordinated custom screens, or disappointing compromised options that disconnect the scrim from the architectural language. There's a better way to hold design intent through your entire project, and it's what Parasoleil’s Scrim Studio is built on: creative flexibility using fixed modules. Combining an online design platform with fixed modular tiles that offer infinite design configuration, Scrim Studio is a new way to think about custom pattern layout for any elevation… and it’s EASY: easy to design, easy to specify, and easy to install.
This evolution of scrim product design comes at a time when projects require a range of solutions to meet local code, public impact, and ever-shifting lead times and budgets. Scrim Studio is your solution. It's the platform where our unique facade systems, built on modular structural components, can be applied as commercial exterior treatments to any building type, span, and wind load rating. This lets the true design intent, the visual heart of any specification, remain site specific and reflect the architectural language, energy performance function, or public art impact that the RFQ originally requested.
Architectural Director Mike Schock has spent several years developing the TesseForm Tiles concept: dimensional shapes that combine into a larger repeating pattern, or build into a progressive, almost symphonic, arrangement. But developing "a formed module with infinite design possibilities" is a tall task, because the real obstacle isn't the industrial design of the physical part. It's how the project architect arranges those parts into an array that meets the overall design, engineering, and budget requirements.
Enter Shane Johnson, Estimating & Design Director. Shane built the design platform that lets the configurable design process pair fluidly with specification and lets that specification communicate seamlessly with supply chain partners and installers. This kind of integration is hard to replicate, and it's just part of what sets Parasoleil apart. But let’s get back to the real benefit of this platform and product system. This isn’t just a design space with pretty patterns to play with as inspiration for a project. Every decision in the platform manipulates your created array while displaying the visual impact of shadows from sunlight, wind load performance, openness percentage, and structural connection points to the building. Every Scrim Studio session ends with something real: A pre-engineered and unique configuration, complete with data sheets, firm costs, and manufacturing-ready CAD files that drop straight into your drawings.
The communication with downstream contractors gets even more interesting. Built into the Scrim Studio are value engineering options that can be specified as “alternates” which still satisfy the design intent if the GC’s budget asks for a sharper pencil. From design-to-install, Scrim Studio is equipped with all the right tools to make each step intuitive and helpful.
With that in mind, Parasoleil is hosting an Advisory Panel of commercial exterior architects to evaluate and fine tune the design platform and product system. This building envelope alliance (okay, the title might be overreaching a bit), our advisory panel, is already reviewing the TesseForm Tiles system on Scrim Studio and will weigh in on every future system released on the platform with the intent to make design better coordinated, specification stronger, and installation easier. Expect more from the advisory panel as it develops.
As we have hinted above, the first product system available on Scrim Studios will be our new TesseForm Tiles line, offered in two basic forms: a three-sided and a four-sided faceted pyramid, with solid or perforated facets. These forms also have a VE counterpart - “Optic,” - flat versions that offer the illusion of dimensionality.
Regardless of the options available, it’s important to note that all TesseForm Tile modules are easily installed at the same span distances and come with the same wind load performance rating – a difficult feature to achieve with different forms and perforations. The universal support structure and span free you to design the overlaying scrim with endless configurable options.
There is more to explain: Guided design paths, recommendations based on project needs, performance information that updates as the design changes, and design-assist support for projects that need to go fully custom. But like a sunrise in Rocky Mountain National Park, with golden aspen leaves fluttering in the fall breeze, some things are better experienced than explained.
As of September 2026, Scrim Studio and TesseForm Tiles are trademarked and patent pending. They join Parasoleil’s family of architectural scrim systems and are supported by our AIA-accredited continuing-education courses, “Pattern Mapping for Lasting Design” and “Elevating a Façade with Architectural Scrim Systems.”
If you design parking garages, data centers, public-art screens, branded façades, or other ventilated exterior cladding systems, Scrim Studio was created for you. It has turnkey systems that span over glazing and parking decks and VE options to meet any project need. Come explore a new way to design the second skin of a building—one that gives you room to create while helping your design make it all the way to installation. https://scrimstudio.parasoleil.com/
