Mohd. Talib leads membrane and material selection at Ekra Decor. A graduate design engineer who works in AutoCAD, with more than five years in tensile structures, he writes and checks the material guidance published here — which coating family, which weight class, which finish.

Material selection is not a finish chosen at the end of a project. It is set by the span, by the environment the roof has to work in, and by what the membrane is being asked to do structurally. A panel on a retractable roof has to pleat and re-tension every time the roof moves; a permanent landmark canopy never folds once installed. Those are different fabrics, not different colours of the same one.

The four families behave differently enough that treating them as interchangeable is the most common and most expensive specification error. PVC-coated polyester is economical, flexible and repairable, with the shortest life of the four. A PVDF surface treatment buys durability and self-cleaning because dirt does not key into the surface. PTFE-coated fibreglass is glass fibre rather than polyester — rigid, brittle to fold, demanding on site, and effectively permanent in exchange. ETFE is not a fabric at all but a film, usually inflated into cushions, which makes it a different engineering problem involving air pressure rather than tension.

Much of the material writing here is deliberately about where each option is the wrong answer. Span, design life and how much daylight has to come through the roof will narrow the choice before anyone has named a brand, and a specification that leads with the fabric rather than those three questions is usually working backwards.

Ekra Decor works across all four families rather than defaulting to one, and the material pages are checked against the fabrics the company actually buys, fabricates and installs.

Pages reviewed by Mohd. Talib

That selection work does not stop at the datasheet. A membrane has to be cut, welded and detailed before it becomes a roof, so the choice has to survive the drawings — panel layout, seam lines, edge and corner details, and the clamped connections where the fabric meets the steel.

Those decisions show up across Ekra Decor's archive: PVC and PVDF on the bulk of the company's covered parking and courtyard work, and heavier specifications where the roof is permanent and public, such as the courtyard roof at Vasant Square Mall in Vasant Kunj or the 1,858 m² atrium roof in Lucknow.

Each of these carries a “Reviewed by” line naming Mohd. Talib and the date it was last checked.

• Choosing a tensile membrane
• PTFE-coated fibreglass
• ETFE film and cushion systems
• PVC-coated polyester
• PVDF finishes
• Serge Ferrari membranes
• What drives tensile fabric price

Last updated: 15 September 2026

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