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Inspired by the surface-following alignment of enamel rods in tooth enamel, we develop a fabric architecture that integrates build-orientation-controlled fiber alignment with a staggered interlocking topology of cubic unit cells. By optimizing build orientation and leveraging its shape-adaptive structural feature, this bioinspired architecture enables surface-following reinforcement, thereby harnessing anisotropy and achieving spatially uniform mechanical enhancement. Vacuum-confinement-induced jamming further enhances strength and energy absorption, while shifting the postyield response from bending-dominated deformation to friction-governed tilting of the interlocked unit cells, improving recovery ratio and overcoming the conventional trade-off between strength and recoverability. Consequently, this architecture demonstrates 1.85\u00d7 higher specific strength and 1.92\u00d7 higher specific energy absorption than the nonoptimized reference without vacuum confinement, ranking it among the leading lightweight load-bearing and energy-absorbing architectures. Additionally, the proposed fabric architecture delivers spatially uniform mechanical protection, a capability that remains challenging to achieve using conventional PBF-printed fiber-reinforced architectures. This work introduces a synergistic strengthening strategy that integrates structural design, process control, and external confinement. Importantly, we propose a general architecture-driven design paradigm that transforms mechanical anisotropy from a limitation into a performance advantage. The resulting fabric architecture delivers high-performance omnidirectional mechanical protection across diverse applications, such as protective casings of sensitive underwater systems and shape-adaptive protective covers.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.2608431123","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,14]],"date-time":"2026-09-14T19:05:01Z","timestamp":1789412701000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.cm10313","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Bioinspired fabric architecture harnessing anisotropy for omnidirectional mechanical protection"],"prefix":"10.1073","volume":"123","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8896-9208","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yuanyuan","family":"Tian","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/02e7b5302","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University","place":["Singapore, Singapore"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0003-4071-2432","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hanzhi","family":"Chi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/02e7b5302","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University","place":["Singapore, Singapore"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6152-0558","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Wei Shian","family":"Tey","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/02e7b5302","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University","place":["Singapore, Singapore"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2688-8960","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zuoqi","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/02e7b5302","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University","place":["Singapore, Singapore"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0008-0456-1928","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jingbo","family":"Fan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/02e7b5302","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University","place":["Singapore, Singapore"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0004-0661-8941","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zheng Han","family":"Lim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/02e7b5302","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University","place":["Singapore, Singapore"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-3592-7925","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Adrian","family":"Ong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/02e7b5302","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University","place":["Singapore, Singapore"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jerry","family":"Qi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01zkghx44","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"The George W. 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