Architectural Yarns - Matters of Activity

Our research aims to discover new forms of un/making for the regeneration and repair of the built environment that actively engages with the climate and the people. With their thermal, tactile and communicative role, textiles have always contributed to modulating interiors, unfolding in dialogue with space and its inhabitants.

Architectural Yarns negotiate between the scales of textile and architecture, and between the timescales and life cycles of building elements. As a design intervention they are less concerned with permanence and more with adaptation and flexibility of (re)use. Faced with the abundance of the existing built and anthropogenic mass, architectural practice may not necessarily be oriented towards new buildings, instead acknowledging the refurbishment and retrofitting of existing spaces as one of the most important current and future challenges.

Yarns are ›mixtures‹ – hierarchically structured, flexible composites, that we link to biological materials and waste infrastructures across scales. They can actively engage with the climate by deploying thermally active phase-change materials or cellulose-based plant fibers. Through experimental prototyping, textile techniques are explored to create soft, provisional architectures – climatic curtains, room partitions or interior landscapes. By using textile binding techniques like knitting, crocheting and wrapping, we are exploring structural assemblies that can be unraveled again and reworked into new settings. The tactile manual for constructing can be physically programmed into the yarn by graded material geometries and properties.

In this research, we combine methods from practice-based research in Architecture and Textile Design with the Natural Sciences and Humanities. The research bridges the projects Material Form Function and Weaving and builds on a network of academic and non-academic partners, such as textile institutes, manufacturers, and non-profit organizations with knowledge of textile technology and material flows.

Members

Prof. Thomas Auer

Architecture

Maja Avnat

Design

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Dr. Michaela Eder

Materials Science

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Prof Dr. Dr. h.c. Peter Fratzl

Materials Science

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Dr. rer. nat. Heike Illing-Günther

Engineering Chemistry

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Natalija Miodragović

Architecture

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Prof. Dr. Lucy Norris

Social Anthropology

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Iva Rešetar

Architecture

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Nikolai Rosenthal

Medical Engineering

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Prof. Christiane Sauer

Architecture & Design

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Maxie Schneider

Architecture & Design

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Nayeli Vega Vargas

Design

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Alumni

Jojo Shone

Textile and Surface Design

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Collaborators

MoA Research Groups

Adaptive Fibrous Materials
Structural Textile Group, Object Space Agency

MoA Design Research Studios

weißensee school of art and design berlin, Department Textile- and Material Design

Collaborating Institutions

Sächsisches Textilforschungsinstitut e.V. (STFI)

Subevents

Material as Environmental Device

The hybrid workshop »Material as Environmental Device« on September 10th, 2020, gathered researchers and practitioners from the fields of Architecture, Ecological Anthropology, and the Natural Sciences to discuss the status of the material as an active element of environmental design based on past and contemporary buildings and current research in the Cluster »Matters of Activity«. more

Weaving Practices – An Exploration into the Materials, Techniques and Design of Fabrics

This one-day, practice-based, interdisciplinary workshop brought together specialists who highlighted concepts and practices of weaving from various angles by emphasizing specific techniques, technologies, materials, patterns, and design. more

Scaling Fiber: Experimental Yarn, MoA Design Research Studio

The MoA Design Research Studio »Scaling Fiber: Experimental Yarn« explored the upscaling of fiber into yarns as structural elements for the architectural scale and context. It was a transdisciplinary exchange between architecture, textile technology, materials science, and cultural studies aiming at new concepts for sustainable design technologies. more

Design Lab #13: Material Legacies

The exhibition at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin explored contingencies and ruptures between traditional crafts and the most recent developments at the crossroads of material research, design, engineering, and architecture. It brought together artifacts from the museum’s collection with work-in-progress installations by designers and researchers from »Matters of Activity« to initiate a dialogue about the historical, contemporary, and future conditions under which materiality unfolds. more

Round Table »On Fibers and Mixtures«

The discussion on February 23rd, 2023, was the last roundtable series event accompanying the exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. With the guests - the philosopher Emanuele Coccia and the artist Beatriz Morales as well as the material scientist and Cluster Co-Director Peter Fratzl – the architects and Cluster members Christiane Sauer and Iva Rešetar discussed fibrous architectures in relation to mixtures – across disciplinary contexts. more

Textile Gestures - Mapping Tactile Practices with Architectural Yarns

Group member Maxie Schneider led this hand-on-workshop for a group of 45 international students from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and COOP Design Research of Hochschule Anhalt within the framework of the two-day mini-festival »Design Acts: Gestures of Performative Research«. The participants explored, verbalized, and mapped tactile practices and textile gestures with large-scale yarns made from natural fibers. more

Architectures of Weaving – Book Publication

The multidisciplinary anthology edited by MoA members Christiane Sauer, Mareike Stoll, Ebba Fransén Waldhör, and Maxie Schneider connects architecture and textile by exploring fiber architectures from the micro-scale of biological systems to the macro scale of textile and built structures. more

FIBROUS EXCHANGE / Fibrous Practices - Practicing Fibers

The workshop revisited the Work Exotica III by Ritzi Jacobi and took inspiration for a transdisciplinary exchange between textile design, materials science, and architecture. During a hands-on exploration of off-the-loom textile techniques, knowledge was transferred from the different disciplines into an architectural context. more

Design for Rethinking Resources

Group Member Natalija Miodragović contributed to the proceedings of the UIA World Congress of Architects in Copenhagen 2023 with the article »Plektonik — Active Yarns for Adaptive Loop-Based Material Systems«. This research with Daniel Suárez investigates contemporary textile techniques and plant-based »active« yarns to describe a new material system and fabricate lightweight structural prototypes. more

DAOULA | sheen

The group contributed several objects to the exhibition at Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin, which focused on the natural formation and the cultural history of wild silk obtained from caterpillars in West Africa, and on the many and complex ways in which this unique material is viewed by microbiologists, materials scientists, and architects in Germany. more

Activarium

With the »Activarium«, the Cluster wants to actively engage with potential partners from the industry, start-ups, NGOs, politics, and society as a whole to initiate an exploratory exchange on active materials, bio- & culture-inspired innovation as well as sustainability approaches. MoA's Showroom exhibits several prototypes developed by Architectural Yarns. more

BEYOND THE CURTAIN - Creating Transient Environments, MoA Design Research Studio

In the winter semester of 2023/24 the Studio explored curtains as active spatial elements. Soft and responsive, they suggest an architecture of transition and change. An interdisciplinary exchange with experts from research and practice accompanied the design process: In experimental hands-on workshops, active materials that interact with their environment, like hydrogel, wax, water, and salt hydrate were examined together with researchers from the Cluster. more

Mutual Exchange of Bauhaus Earth and Research Group Architectural Yarns

On July 15th, 2024, members from Bauhaus Earth and the research group »Architectural Yarns« exchanged common ideas and current projects with mutual visits to MoA's Activarium and the Marienpark Lab of Bauhaus Earth. This mutual visit fostered an exchange of ideas for potential collaborations, emphasizing the shared goals and innovative approaches in sustainable architecture and material design. Key overlapping areas of interest include the reuse of materials, circular resources, economic potentials, and rethinking aesthetics in housing, and building culture. more