Architectural Yarns
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.
