Book: Textile Logic for a soft space

Textile Logic for a soft space ISBN 978-87-7830-290-8

9 788778 302908

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Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen Karin Bech The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture CITA Centre for IT and Architecture

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Table of contents Preface

3

Introduction

7

Thinking a Textile Architecture

11

Defining a Textile Logic

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The Material Skin CAD CAM Knitting Listener Strange Metabolisms Workshop: Architectural Knitted Surfaces Workshop: Performing Skins

25 27 33 37 43 47

The Room: Skin and Structure Knitted Skins Slow Furl Lace Wall Workshop: Pattern Anatomies

51 53 59 65 69

Textiles Tectonics Woven Wood Thaw Thicket Workshop: Parametric Weaving

73 75 81 87 93

Publications and Dissemination

97

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PREFACE

“In front of me lies a crystal geode that has broken away from the earth’s crust. Many many pyramids and prismatic forms have, as it were, grown out of the earth’s crust , and radiate in the sunshine. All are varied in size and shape, but each one is built according to the same constructional law. Doesn’t one already have the impression here of architectonic creation – don’t these structures seem to demand the creating hand of man to shape a meaningful entity out of the chaos of these elemental forms?” [1]

Preface In the late 1918 to the early 1920’s the architect Bruno Taut founded the Glass Chain a semimystical group of architects and artists that together sought to define a new architecture for a new era. Reacting to the devastation of the First World War this was an architecture of exuberance. Drawn in the image of the crystal the architecture it imagined was for a new emerging world, growing forth in a new order of clarity, transparency and light. Inspired by his friend and collaborator the author Paul Scheerbert, Taut and his Glass Chain fellows foresaw an architecture constructed from inflammable materials of glass, steel and concrete and cast within the new electrical lighting. The inherent tie to the material allowed the imagination of new structural systems giving rise to new forms and types freed from the utilitarian and instead shaping a new and pure architecture of eternal structures rupturing from the ground.

The correlation between the emergence of a new structural platform from which to think the materialisation of our built environment and the splendour of the visions that it was simultaneously led and enabled by exists as an image for the present project. The project investigates a textile architecture. Inspired by the dramatic advances within the technical textiles field, the initial aim for the project has been to correlate the development of new material platform with the architectural practices of design and fabrication. The investigation presented here spans the highly speculative with the directly pragmatic. The aim for these investigations has been to find the wider implications of textile thinking in architectural practice. As we enter a new era shaped by the maturing interfaces that allow for direct links between digital design and fabrication we are presented with a new material practice informed by the fully scaled rather than the represented, the performative rather than the static and soft rather than the hard. As such this project asks what are the textile logics that can inform our new architectural practice and how would it be to live in a soft space?

References [1] Whyte, I.B., The Crystal Chain Letters, Cambridge University Press, 1985 3

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Textile Logic for a soft space Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen Karin Bech

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture CITA Centre for IT and Architecture

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INTRODUCTION

Introduction The following presents a research investigation into the making of a textile architecture.

Taking point of departure in recent developments within the technical textiles industry and the resulting advancement of highly specified high performance textiles, the projects presented here examine what happens as these materials are integrated with architectural building practice. The projects have a dual perspective. The first perspective examines the making of textile membranes for architectural enclosure. It explores the materials and technologies that enable the making of textile architecture and in a very straight forward manner suggests ways in which textiles can be implemented in architectural setting. Informed by the development of high strength fibres as well as conductive and resistive fibres the projects further ask how these membranes can be specified in respect to their structural as well as actuated performance. The second perspective looks at the consequences for integrating textile thinking into architectural practice. These affect architecture both in respect to its descriptive practices as well as its material-tectonic practices. Designing for textile membranes necessitates the making of new material descriptions that can incorporate the highly specified and the double curved. Departing from an essentially mono-material as well as fundamentally orthographic representational tradition, the projects explore how complex material design can be incorporated into the practice of architectural design. This query is informed by an essentially performative material understanding. Textile thinking in architecture enables the invention of new tectonic principles informed by the inherent material tensions that are the core of textile structures. Here, the frictive and the self-bracing become means by which the pliable and the structural as well as the static and the actuated can meet. Developing the term textile logic the aim is to explore how concepts such as material specification, seamlessness and pliability challenge the conceptual as well as the material thinking of architecture.

The presented projects have been developed using a practice based research method. Merging the pragmatic with the highly speculative the projects centre on the making of a series of research probes. Each probe is developed through a design process through which the concepts, technologies and experiences of embedded computation have been developed and exemplified. The probes therefore examine both the technological and material consequences of working with textile architecture as well as their spatial significance.

The projects have been undertaken through a series of collaboration with partners from architecture, textile design and technical textiles. These cross disciplinary investigations have allowed the project to define research questions that merge architectural concerns with direct technological and material inquiries. The projects were initiated and led by 7

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architect Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Centre for IT and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture. The central collaboration defining the key research questions is developed in collaboration with textiles designer Toni Hicks, Constructed Textiles, School of Architecture and Design, University of Brighton and technical textiles engineer Tilak Dias, School of Materials, The University of Manchester. This collaboration has been expanded through a set of further collaborations with Ayelet Karmon, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Behnam Pourdeyhimi, North Carolina State University, College of Textiles as well as workshops with Loop.ph and Marcos&Marjan, The Bartlett School of Architecture. The research project has furthermore included a series of research based workshop allowing for quick prototyping and material testing. The workshops were led by the key research team and invited guest researchers to work with students on key themes included into the project. Invited guest researchers include: Rachel Wingfield and Matthias Gmalch, Loop.ph, and Design and Marcos Cruz and Marjan Colletti, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

The project is supported by Ă…se og Ejnar Danielsens Fond as well as further funding through Realdania, the Nordic Culture Fund, Dreyer Fonden, Statens Kunstfond, University of Brighton, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.

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Thinking a textile architecture In architecture and with Frei Otto, there is a long tradition in the use of textiles in building construction. The double curvature surfaces that describe tensile structures such as the Olympic Stadium in Munich or the Multihalle in Mannheim, revolutionised the formal languages of architecture and provided new structural concepts [1, 2]. Whereas the textiles constructions of the 70’s and 80’s are limited by their mono-functionality and were therefore mainly used as rain and sun screens, new developments in the technical textiles industry promise new potentials for the use of textiles in architectural applications.

The last decade has seen an extreme development of the textiles industry. The invention of highly engineered fibres and yarns as well as new fabrication techniques for weaving, knitting, pleating, welding or laminating materials, is exploding the use of textiles across a large variety of industries. During the last 50 years the textile industry has largely moved to Asia [3]. This has led the US and European textile industries to specialise their production, developing new computer controlled looms and knitting machines that automate production and allow the making of textiles of radically increased material and structural complexity.

Simultaneously to this development of a new technological platform, developments with the field of material science has led to the emergence of a vast range of synthetic materials such as high performance polyethylene (HPPE), mono- and para-armids (kevlar), glass and carbon fibre. These highly engineered materials challenge strength to weight ratios of traditional materials creating the basis for a new material practice of light weight and high strength structures [4]. These developments have led to the proliferation of textiles in a range of new application areas. From the miniature detailing of knitted arteries to the extreme scales of geo-textiles, textiles are entering new fields of fabrication hybridising existing technologies and inventing new.

Textiles as a model for composite materials Architectural design is entering a radical rethinking of its material practice. Advancements in material science are fundamentally changing the way we conceive and design the materials by which architecture is made. Where industrialisation brought forth an era focused on standardisation and mass production, the contemporary production industries are instigating a new material practice where materials are highly engineered and customised for their particular purpose. In this practice the design of artefacts is also the design of materials.

From nylon stockings to the petrol we drive our cars by; we are surrounded by man made materials designed in response to sets of highly specified performance requirements.

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The idea of engineered materials is fundamental to architectural construction. Traditional building materials such as brick and reinforced concrete are defined composites of respectively brick and mortar or cement, sand and steel. By bringing different materials together the material performance of the composite is controlled and developed. In modern building practice pre-defined composite structures make up much of the building envelope. Here, especially laminated structures merge different materials so as to control the differing properties of water screening, insulation and structure.

NASA examples of a sewingmachine developed at the scale of a air plane wing

In textiles the concept of composite materials is highly pertinent. The processes of fabrication; knitting, weaving lacing or felting, can be understood as technologies of assemblage bringing fibres together to engineer unified materials with particular properties. As such, textiles are composites. But rather than being layered or laminated these materials are structurally interconnected. Textile structures are based on friction. Their pliable materials are held into place through yarn to yarn friction that allows the membrane structural coherence. This creates a material interdependence that further increases the complexity of their performance. The different techniques of textile fabrication produce different material qualities and are as such part of the material design. The comparable stiffness of weave or the supple structures of knit can be controlled and varied through the adjustment of thread density or stitch size.

The actuated and the structural Developments in the textile industry have led the emergence of a new class of actuated fibres. These fibres are conductive, resistive or state changing extending the idea of the composite beyond the realm of the structural to the animate. By incorporating actuated materials, that intensify colour, absorb energy, emit light or heat or stir movement, the textile itself becomes an actuated surface that can be computationally controlled. The integration of conductive fibres allow simple circuitries to become direct parts of the textile membrane making it possible to incorporate switches or sensor, and in this way making the textile membrane part of the computational matrix.

Woven structures at architectural scale exemplified in geodetic airplanes

As the idea of the composite changes from the purely structural to that which can actively sense and act upon its environment we enter a new thinking of the intersections between the computational and the material. If computation traditionally has been thought as a semantic description, these actuated composites create new interdependencies between programming and material. Here, the designing of form is also the programming of behaviour.

Where the programming of actuation is fundamentally dependent on the weight, stiffness or flexibility of the membrane, it is also through the design of shape that the material gains its particular motility. As such, this new material practice has much in common with the field of robotics. Both understand computation as fundamentally embodied, acting with and upon its material presence.

The consideration of these new computational composites challenges design practice introducing a new behavioural logic. As suggested by Michelle Addington, architecture is here presented with a shift from a formal culture focussed on spatial extension, to a new focus on performance and response: “[w]hereas standard building materials are static in that they are intended to withstand building forces; smart materials are dynamic in that they behave in response to energy fields. This is an important difference as our normal means of representation in architectural design, through orthographic projection, privileges the static material... With a smart material, we should be clearly focussing on what we want it to do,

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not how we want it to look” [5]. Addington presents the departure from a formalist and essentially autonomous understanding of architectural production to one that is linked intrinsically to the material, the active and the present. If architectural culture is predominantly situated within the abstracted place of representation, configuring its drawings in respect to a model of notation and interpretation, this new focus posits design as always connected to a deep understanding of materiality and behaviour.

A new technological foundation: scaling textile principles In architecture textiles has provided a metaphor by which a new generation of structures are understood. Where modern building structures separate the compressive logic of the wall from the tensile logic of roof, a new generation of projects explores the building membrane as a wrapping skin. In projects such as OMA’s Seattle Public Library [6], Herzog & de Meuron’s Prada Shop, Tokyo [7] and Foster’s British Museum [8], the building membrane is developed as a unified mesh enveloping the built environment. Here, the idea of the light weight and self-supporting curtain wall, the modernist separation of façade and structure, is constructed as a shaped skin designed to create complex enclosures while simultaneously being structurally performing.

Whereas the material might still be steel and glass and the joinery bolted and welded, these buildings suggest an architectural thinking of textile membranes as alternatives to traditional structural hierarchies. As explored by Beesley and Hanna in their text “Lighter: a transformed architecture”, textiles in architecture provides a new model by which the rigid orders of primary, secondary and tertiary structures are replaced by interdependent structures that perform together: “Instead of fixed, rigid connections based on compression, textile structures use tension. The binding of one fibre to the next is achieved through the tension exerted by the immediately adjacent fibres. Rather than relying on support from the previous, stronger member, the system is circular, holding itself in exquisite balance” [9].

Foster`s Swizz Re building: separation of facade and structure OMA Seattle library: the membrane is developed as a wrapping skin

These interdependent friction based structures call upon a textile logic for thinking structural principals. As such, they foreground the question of scale. Where textile principles are well understood at the scale of traditional fabrics, the question remains how to suggest these at scales that engage the built environment. In architecture and engineering there are precedents for this thinking. In the late 19th century the Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov developed light metal lattice structures as radio- and water towers. These structures diagonally spin thin metal slats into hyperboloid drums pushed out by horizontal circular members.

Each crossing of slats is connected thereby creating stiffness. The structures are essentially self-bracing, pressing them selves into tension [10].

The idea of woven structures at architectural scale is also exemplified in the geodetic airframes constructed in the early 1930s. Here, wooden slats [11] or steel members [12] are woven together bracing the slats against each other spinning the shape together along the fuselage. As in the work of Shukhov, the weave is held in place by the fixing of each of the crossing slats and pressed out by evenly spaced rigid rings. The structures proved a light weight development of stressed skin constructions. In effect balancing tension against compression, these load distributing networks proved an exceptional prevention of torsion in the fuselage and therefore buckling of the skin.

Shukhov tower: in the radio tower Sabolovka from 1919, 6 hyperboloid structures are mounted on top of each other creating a 150 m high tower Shukhov’s pumping station in Groznyj

A second class of load distributing networks is the gridshell. Shukhov’s early steel gridshell roofs for projects such as the pumping station in Groznyj or the All Russian Exhibition in Niznij Novgorod in 1895 developed the technique using steel slats [13]. Here, each member 13

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Frei Otto: double curvature surfaces as a tensile structure in the Multihalle in Mannheim

Le Ricolais’ tensile networks: rigid rings held in place by networks of cables creating hyperboloid tubular constructions

Alvaro Siza and Cecil Balmond´s Serpentine Pavilion is a network of single elements creating a reciprocal grid in which each member leans upon the next.

Shigeru Ban’s Japan pavilion for Expo 2000: tunnel arch of paper tubes

is fixed against each other in a lattice work creating stiffness. In the roof for the Vyksa steelworks, Shukhov furthered complicated the shaping of the gridshell by using a curved beam to rest the slats on. This curvature creates a corresponding bulge in the longitudinal direction thereby creating a double curvature in the shell. But it was Frei Otto who in the 1970’s fully explored the geometric freedom of gridshell structures. In the Multihalle Mannheim project the flexible nature of gridshell was developed [14]. Using timber the freeform structure was initially built on the ground as lattice based layering of wood slats connected by intersecting nodes. The structure was then raised into position after which each node was fixed. The Multihalle Mannheim exploits the compressive nature of the structural system.

As the structure is raised the nodes in effect slide upon each other allowing the free form to be shaped.

The works of Buckminster Fuller and Robert Le Ricolais during the late 1940’s and 50’s further articulate the interdependence between tensile and compressive members. Working with tension rather than friction, both experimented with structures in which compressive members are pulled apart by tensile cables. In Le Ricolais’ work rigid rings are held in place by networks of cables creating hyperboloid tubular constructions [15]. Le Ricolais conceived these tensile networks as auto-morphic beams and imagined their potential as structures for funicular railway tubes [16]. In Fuller’s work the synergetic relationship between tension cable and compressive strut is conceived as clearly differentiate tension-compression structures. In these tensional integrities, or tensigrities, the compressive members are held together by tensile cables. A secondary binding shifts from the end of one strut to the middle of the next. As such the tensile members are greatly reduced. Fuller’s interest in developing structures with maximum enclosure led him to explore geodetic dome that, for their light weight and ease of transportation, were mainly suggested as structures for temporary shelters and the military [17].

If textiles can be understood a network of connections distributing stress synergetically across its surface a key question becomes what principles of organisation are appropriate for surfaces that perform at architectural scale. This question informs the contemporary work of engineer Cecil Balmond [18]. Working across a series of projects, Balmond has explored the structural principles of weave. Inventing the idea of macro-weaving, Balmond develops strategies by which the woven network’s mutual friction based stiffening can be exploited for architectural application. Developing the work, Balmond points to a series of limitations. Where weaving as a technique necessitates flexibility of each fibre, these simultaneously need to be stiff enough to withstand bending or buckling. A second point is the relative difference between the scale of the surface and that of the individual fibre. Pointing out the difference between the thread lengths used in traditional fabrics and the given scales of building materials, Balmond develops new structural hybrids merging the logics of weave with that of reciprocal truss frameworks. In projects such as the Shigeru Ban’s Forrest Park Pavillion proposal and the realised Alvaro Siza Serpentine Pavillion, a network of single elements, the size of two units in the weave, create a reciprocal grid in which each member leans upon the next. Controlling the shape and length of each individual member computationally, the structures are given geometrical freedom.

In the speculative work of Peter Testa and Devyn Weiser the question of thread length is given primacy. In projects such as Weaver, Carbon Tower and Extreme Networks, the imagination of endlessly long carbon fibre stands is used to examine the making of complex structural surfaces [19]. These projects focus on the computational aspects of generating complex surfaces. Where the Carbon Tower investigates the computational modelling of weave structures, Extreme Networks suggests non-woven structures as a principle for com-

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plex non-hierarchical surfaces. Non-woven fabrics, like felt, are randomly entangled creating unordered structures where discreet elements compound to create a friction based surface. Where traditional felts depend upon the given lengths of wool fibres, new synthetic non-wovens uses long fibres to enhance the connectivity of the surface. In Testa and Weiser’s vision these complex networks are computationally driven. Moving away from a reductionist logic of networks as connections between shortest paths, their work explores agent based systems to drive each strand within the surface as a trajectory of movement. Suggesting the term agential materialist combinatorics the project fuses computational logics with material ones.

The Peter Testa Weaver project questioning the length of the thread

Pliability: designing for a soft space The projects above assemble a series of textile based strategies for architecture construction.

Taking point of departure in textiles as a technology rather than a material, these projects explore different properties of a textile logic. But where these projects have the shared aim of holding the textile structure in a fixed position perhaps the most significant property of textiles is their inherent pliability. In garments, nets, sails and ropes the key material performance at stake is the motility of the surface and means by which they can be dynamically redistributed. In architecture the tent is an obvious example of a motile structure. Temporary structures such as tents, awnings, retractable canopies or baldachins make use of the dynamic properties of textiles but need secondary structures to perform structurally. The question of pliability is a question of scale. If textile structures are soft, architectural textiles perform this softness at greater scales.

However, the question of pliability asks profound questions to architectural design culture.

How could architecture make use of the motile and the soft? What would an architecture of movement and state change suggest? How could it be to live in a soft space? If architectural design culture is predominantly situated within the abstracted place of representation, configuring its drawings in respect to a model of notation and interpretation, this new focus posits space inherently performative. This challenges our design paradigms. Representation is traditionally considered outside the temporal instead of giving primacy to the static and the ideal of the eternal. A soft architecture asks how our design traditions can be expanded to incorporate the moving and the behavioural. In this way the suggestion of the pliable and yielding gives rise to a computational inquiry. If the soft skin of a textile architecture could incorporate materials that enable in integration of circuitries, sensors and actuators, how would such robotic membranes be programmed? What are the logics of an architecture of behaviour and how can the computational be brought together with the material and the formed?

Finally, the imagination of a soft space asks what the qualities of such a space could be.

Textiles allow for an architecture thought beyond the rectilinear logics of set-square instead defined along the curved geometries of their skins. In the same sense their presence is shaped across the temporal, continually within a process of change and movement. These new coordinates challenge a modern understanding of space as extension, instead bringing forth a particular understanding of the sensual and the present. As in Adolf Loos’s bedroom for his young wife Lina [20], space becomes infused with a new material nearness.

Alvar Aalto furniture study

Adolf Loos bedroom design for his young wife Lina Loos

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References [1] Nerdinger, W., “Frei Otto: Complete Works. Lightweight construction - natural design”, Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität München, Base, Birkhäuser, 2005. p. 260.

[2] Schock, H. J., Soft shells. Design and technology of tensile architecture, Birkhauser, Basel, 1997 p. 48.

[3] Anderson, K., “The New Silk Roads: East Asia and world textile markets”, Cambridge University Press, 1992. p. 70.

[4] McQuaid, M., Extreme Textiles – designing for high performance, Thames and Hudson, 2005. p. 10 [5] Addington, M. 2001 Smart Materials and Technologies. In A+U Feature Structure and Materials (05:2001). p. 62.

[6] ‘OMA-LMN: Seattle Central Library, Seattle, USA 2004; Architects: OMA / Rem Koolhaas’ in A+U: Architecture and Urbanism (412) January 2005. p.150-167.

[7] Herzog & de Meuron, G. Celant, M. “Prada Aoyama Tokyo”, Fondazione Prada, 2004. p. 86.

[8] Foster, N., Sudjic, D., de Grey, S. “Norman Foster and The British Museum”, Pretsel Verlag, 2001. p 58.

[9] Beesley, P., Hanna, S., “Lighter: a transformed architecture” in Extreme Textiles – designing for high performance, eds McQuaid, M., Thames and Hudson, 2005. p. 109.

[10] Graefe, R., Gappoev, M., Pertschi, O., “Vladimir G. Suchov - Die Kunst der Sparsammen Konstruktion” Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1990. p. 78.

[11] Poulsen, C. M., ”Geodetic Construction: Vickers-Wallis System Explained : Advantages of Concentrating Material. Balancing Tension Against Compression” Flight. January 16, 1936. p 67.

[12] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11107561 as sourced 26 Sept 2011.

[13] Graefe, R., Gappoev, M., Pertschi, O., “Vladimir G. Suchov - Die Kunst der Sparsammen Konstruktion” Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1990. p. 47.

[14] Nerdinger, W., “Frei Otto: Complete Works. Lightweight construction - natural design”, Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität München, Base, Birkhäuser, 2005. p. 100.

[15] McCleary, P. Some Pinciples of Structure Exemplified in the Work of Le Ricolais, Zodiac Vol 22, 1973 p. 65-69.

[16] Mccleary, P. “Some structural principles. Exemplified in the work of Le Ricolais”, Zodiac 22: Light Structures, A Review of Contemporary Architecture, Nº 22, 1972 , p. 57.

[17] Gorman, M. J., “Buckminster Fuller: Designing for Mobility”, Skira Editore, 2005p.

115.

[18] Simmonds, T., self, M., Bosia, D., Woven Surface and Form in “Architextiles” ed. Garcia M., AD Architecture and Design, Vol 76, No 6. 2006. p. 89.

[19] Testa, P., Weiser, D., Material Agency in “Networed Practice – new strategies in architecture and design”, Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. p. 128.

[20] Colomina, B., The Split Wall, Domestic Voyeurism in “Sexuality & Space” ed by Colomina, B., Bloomer, J., Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. p. 93.

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DEFINING A TEXTILE LOGIC

Because new and exotic materials and fabrics are being created almost every day, what can be done with them is not limited by choice but rather by the available design techniques.�

Balmond 2006

Defining a Textile Logic This book presents a series of 9 projects and 5 workshops undertaken within this research framework. The projects vary in their scope as well as their technological and material investigation. Bringing together the speculative and the pragmatic, the design led and the technological, the projects examine how textile thinking can lead to new architectural concepts.

The projects look at a range of different textile techniques and tools. Examining pattern cutting, knitting, lace making and weaving, the primary focus of the projects is to examine underlying principles of textile thinking and to develop own means of transferring these to an architectural context of design and fabrication. The projects are developed through the making of physical probes and prototypes. These material experiments span from the hand 19

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crafted to the highly advanced computer controlled thereby allowing the investigations to be grounded in a fundamental understanding of technique and material behaviour.

A second focus for developing the project is to understand how textile technologies can be interfaced with the architectural traditions of design and specification. Architecture is a tradition of representation. As a scaled notational system, architectural representations are places in which design intent, construction and detail are developed. The conventions of architectural representation give primacy to traditional structural principles. The orthogonal logics of the sectional cut coincide with the structural logics of compressive load. To include the friction based, the tensile and materially performing, it is therefore necessary to develop relevant descriptions in which a project’s tectonic solutions and detail can be developed and communicated.

This challenge of the traditions of representation poses fundamental questions to architectural thinking. In architecture the intellectual, spatial and conceptual investigations take place within the space of representation. As these spaces are reconfigured they affect the way in which architecture can be conceived, proposing new means of thinking space, enclosure and inhabitation. In this way the projects open up for speculative inquiries that merge the technological with the architectural. While probing the techniques and technologies of textile production, the projects simultaneously seek to uncover the qualities of such a space.

The investigation has led to the articulation of a series of thematic concepts by which the consequence of a textile logic in architecture can be understood. These concepts are developed across the multiple projects and act as a critical reflection of the wider framework. As a set of concluding propositions, they merge highly technological observations informed with speculative intentions.

Material specification Textile techniques are means by which single fibres are brought together to form unified materials. Working at the scale of the stitch, the course or the loop, textiles are highly defined surfaces. By controlling the individual intertwining of the fibres the performance of the material can be controlled. In weave this can mean the pattern by which the weft yarn passed between the upper and lower warp yarn, in knitting the direction of each of the single loops and in lacing the sequence of twists and braids. The material performance is further defined by the quality and performance of the fibres by which the material is made.

During the fabrication of the textile, fibres can be replaced thereby changing the quality and performance of the material.

This ability to continually change the quality of the material allows the thinking of textiles as graded materials. Hyper specified and designed, these materials are developed in response to particular criteria by which the strength, elasticity or density of a material can be devised. Where the traditional handcrafts enable this level of material control, the industrialisation of textile manufacturing effected a standardisation of production. With the event of new computer controlled technologies textile production can return a practice of hyper specification. The interfacing with computational design environments allow the designer to develop the material stitch by stitch, directing the structural and material composition.

This new technological platform allows an unprecedented control over the material. Creating direct links between the space of design and the space of fabrication, the idea of the hyper specified material developed in direct response to defined design criteria calls upon a new material practice in which designers of artefacts are also designers of materials. In this 20

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practice materials are seen as bespoke composites, differentiated and graded, and whose particular detailing is a central part of a projects overall solution.

Beyond the planar The development of computationally steered textile manufacturing has lead to the development of new tools allowing the emergence of techniques such as 3D weaving, braiding and embroidery, whole garment knitting and spun-lace hydro entanglement. These techniques increase the structural performance, creating new multilayered techniques and industrialising traditional ones.

Where many of these techniques increase the structural performance by creating new multilayered structures, one of the key properties of these new techniques is the ability to move beyond the planar. Most textile techniques have a cellular logic. Controlling this logic can lead to the three-dimensional shaping of materials. In shape weaving the textile matrix is controlled to allow for three-dimensional shaping. By controlling the length and direction of each fibre a bulging of the material can be produced. In knitting it is the control of the actual structural composition of the material that allows for the design of a three-dimensional shape. By continuing to knit on selected needles, while retaining others, a differentiation in length can be created in turn generating complex forms. Whole garment knitting machines support allow tubular knitting techniques, known from sock and gloves, as well as simple double jersey structures to be expanded to create complex surfaces with protrusions, folds, seamless multiple layers and slits all embedded into one singular material.

By introducing the idea of shaped materials developed outside traditional casting, moulding, rolling or stamping techniques, these new shaped textiles challenge architectural practice. Architecture is a practice profoundly informed by the planar. This new material logic allows a new thinking of how architecture can be produced.

The role of the pattern As fully shaped and graded materials, textiles have their own means of specification. The textile pattern, as a notational system by which the structural and material variations of a textile is described, is fundamentally different to architectural representations. Where architectural drawings take place within a Cartesian space of measured extension, the pattern is defined along the surface of its membranes. Incorporating holding patterns and threedimensional bulges this locally defined surface is not a direct image like representation of its materialisation, but rather a material code. It details the structural logics of the passing of its fibres, as well as the interchange of different fibre types, creating a material description and instruction for manufacture.

Operating outside the representational logics of architectural drawings, these patterns are always fully scaled. Instead of abstracting materialisation, they point directly at the particular size of the tools and fibres by which they are made. In textile design there is no model. If in architecture the model is a place for scaled spatial as well as tectonic speculation, textiles is always contained by the 1:1. Explored through samples and prototypes, textile design can not engage a representational logic. There is no larger scale loom or larger scale fibre by which a future textile can be realised.

The understanding of the drawing as a material code provides a fundamental challenge to the material practices of architectural production. If architecture is to develop its own methods of incorporating material design it is necessary to develop means by which these 21

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new graded materials can be described. In textiles, the introduction of computer controlled fabrication has instigated a new generation of textile patterns. These patterns are graphic computer software by which the machines are run. Emphasising the link between material coding and instruction these new drawings hybridise the traditional patterns and create new.

The pliable: designing for material performance Textiles are a conversation between the pliable and the stiffened. If textile techniques allow the yarns to reinforce each other in friction based structures, they simultaneously rely on the pliable nature of yarns. It is the inherent flexibility that allows the yarns to intertwine or loop around themselves.

Different textile techniques demand different grades of flexibility. Where weave can incorporate yarns of great rigidity, knitting, crocheting and lacing demand yarns with higher degrees of suppleness.

The knowledge and control of this inherent pliability is fundamental to textile manufacturing. In textiles a particular material’s performance is directly linked to its crafting. The spinning of yarns can make it elastic and springy or stiff and unyielding. This bottom up understanding of the yarns and its performance presents a new material understanding linked to the performative and the acting. Textiles perform through tension. The yarn holds an inherent friction as each fibre strand braces against each other and as these are used in textile structures this tension is further perpetuated as each yarn braces against each other.

How can architecture embrace this material understanding? Are there ways in which the materially performing, the tensile and the friction based can become part of architectural structural thinking?

Redundancy Architectural design often operates within a paradigm of optimisation looking for minimal material use and structural support. When looking to textiles a very different approach is developed constructing complex structures through a redundancy of very weak material.

Computational materials The emergence of conductive and state changing materials has instigated a new level of performative thinking in textiles. As textiles become capable of embedding sensing and actuation, these materials become the foundation of new complex composites holding together multiple computational and structural properties. Bringing these together with strategies of hyper specification and graded design allows the conception of a new class of computational materials. In these materials the computational informs the design, the realisation as well as their actuation. Computational materials merge material performance with computational performance. Rather than thinking actuation as animating the inert, the understanding of materials as inherently active and flexible allows computation to become embodied creating a further accentuation of the materially performative.

Programming textiles The conception of computational materials questions how such material can be programmed. If computation is held together with the material how do we think the logics of its 22

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reactive patterns? Learning from bottom up robotics [2] our work sees textiles as a matrix for computation. In robotics digital logics are tied to a physical body. By relating sensing to actuation, the computed is always connected to its environment, to the structure and gravity of its body and its situation in a context. This physical primacy allows the computed to connect with its material, to gain knowledge from and meaning by the infrastructures of the embodied.

Here, the computational is held together with a textile surface. Using the embedded circuitries as strata for sensing and actuation, material acts a common ground by which computational events can be shared. In this way the textile matrix is a model for distributed computation. Rather than being steered from one central computational unit, the textile is a place for negotiation and interaction suggesting the behavioural and the formed as thought through a complex systems’ self-organisation and continual adaptation with a dynamic and changing context.

To live in a soft space A further interest into the making of soft space lies with its occupation. If a space is pliable and its movement computationally steered how does it allow us to think differently about programme and occupation? Textiles allow for an architecture thought beyond the rectilinear logics of set-square instead defined along the curved geometries of their skins. In the same sense their presence is shaped across the temporal, continually within a process of change and movement. The textile installations propose a sensual space. As the user engages with them they enter into their movement cycles, changing their pulse through slight adjustments rhythmic iteration

References [1] Simmonds, T., self, M., Bosia, D., Woven Surface and Form in “Architextiles” ed. Garcia M., AD Architecture and Design, Vol. 76, No 6. 2006. p. 89.

[2] Ramsgaard Thomsen, M., Robotic Membranes in “Protoarchitecture; Analogue and Digital Machines” ed. Sheil , B., AD Architectural Design July/August, Vol. 78, No 4, Whileys, 2008. p. 93.

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The Material Skin The following projects investigate textiles as a model for material specification. By understanding the logic of material construction the projects seek to understand the potential for using textiles as a way of thinking direct interfacing between architectural design practice and material design. The projects: CAD CAM Knitting, Listener and Strange Metabolisms seek to understand how the logics of knitting can be used to create bespoke materials design directly in response to the structural and programmatic requirements of the environment.

The projects use knit as a particular textile structure exploiting the relative ease and rapidity of the technique. Where Strange Metabolisms develops a first endeavour to understand the material properties and uses analogue knitting machines, CAD CAM Knitting and Listener both explore how new digital technologies for computer controlled fabrication can be interfaced directly from the knitting machine.

The three projects are supported by two interdisciplinary workshop investigations: Architectural Knitted Surfaces and Performative Skins both expanding and developing the scope of questioning.

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CAD CAM Knitting CAD CAM Knitting investigates knit as a principle of construction. Exploring the structural logic of stitches and processes by which shaped and gradated materials can be made. By examining the design of textiles using computer controlled knitting machines the aim is to understand how knit as a structural system can be controlled through digital design technologies. Learning from experiments with hand knitting machines, the project examines the means by which knit can be structurally detailed and specified allowing a variation of structural and qualitative performance.

The project is developed through a collaboration with Tilak Dias, School of Materials, Manchester University. The project is supported by Ă…se og Ejnar Danielsens Fond.

A model of material fabrication By understanding computer controlled knitting machines as a means of material fabrication, the project’s focus is to examine how CAD CAM knitting can be a technique by which hyper specified graded materials can be designed and produced. As a technology of digital fabrication computer controlled knitting has more in common with the additive techniques of rapid manufacturing than the subtractive techniques of CNC milling or laser cutting. In knitting, as in rapid manufacture, the material is built up during the process of manufacture from a base material. But in difference to most additive techniques, the base material is highly variegated. Depending only on the flexibility of the yarn and its thickness, knitting can integrate a vast array of materials with each their own structural and performative qualities.

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A second difference is the question of scale. Most additive technologies operate at the scale of the tool, meaning that the produced elements are limited by the scale of the 3D printer or likewise. Where research has been done into the scaling up of these technologies [1] they remain experimental. Computer controlled knitting machines are scaled in response to the requirements of their application. Where most machines relate to the sizes needed in the garment industry with a machine width of approximately 2 m, some machines, like Rachel knitting machines are developed for industrial netting and geo-textiles and expand up to 6 m width. In this way the produced materials start to engage with the scales of building materials.

Two different digital knitting patterns from the software controlling the fabrication of the spacer fabric

The guiding interest in CAD CAM Knitting is to understand how these design and manufacturing technologies can allow the development of hyper specified graded materials that can engage an architectural scale. The projects develop a series of fully scaled material prototypes that speculate on how an interior building membrane could be imagined as a knitted wall.

Spacer fabrics developed at the School of Materials, University of Manchester: three test sample of diferent qualities

Spacer Fabric The project is developed together with the School of Materials at The University of Manchester and takes point of departure the development of spacer fabrics. As a class of materials, spacer fabrics are knitted composites that bring different material properties together to create a thick and relatively stiff material. Spacer fabrics are relatively new materials that have emerged as part of the development of new fabrication technologies. During the last 10 years the fabrics have found a vast amount of uses across a series of application areas [2].

In CAD CAM Knitting we explore the further detailing of the particular spacer fabrics developed at Manchester University. The materials are manufactured on flat bed knitting machines. Composed of an outer elastomer and an inner polyethylene monofilament the material is knitted at high tension but as it comes of the needles the elastomer contracts pulling in the stiff monofilament thereby creating the thickness.

The material investigation explored the qualities of fabric. Understood as a wall membrane to be mounted on a substructure much in the same way as sheet materials such as plas-

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terboards, the aim was to inquire how we could design and specify the qualities and performances of the material. The investigation looks in four key areas of detailing: shaping, pliability, integrating actuation and consolidation.

Material specification The flat bed spacer fabric is created as the elastomer is passed in a circular fashion from front bed to back bed creating a tubular structure. This tube is then interwoven with the polyethylene that zigzags across the two beds in a straight tuck. The control of the amount of needles used in the tuck decides the thickness of the material. The more needles the tuck

Samples of shape spacer fabric. From left to right: spacer fabric shaped with integrated steel treads, consolidation with heating and 3D shape knitting test

leaves bare the more the elastomer can contract and therefore the thicker the material can get. Conversely the more needles the tuck employs the more dense material becomes and therefore the stiffer. The structural properties of the material are therefore a balance between thickness and stiffness.

The second property for material specification is the quality of the incorporated fibres. In investigating the material properties we tested multiple elastomers and polyethylene monofilaments with different elasticity and stiffness to control the material quality. We also tested other forms of polyethylenes by which very thick and dense materials can be developed using the same basic structuring.

Spacer fabric tests using consolidation through fibre coated qualities

Shaping A key investigation in CAD CAM Knitting has been to allow for the shaping of the surface.

When considering the use of knitted materials for the interior a key property of these materials is the way by which they can allow for complex form. If planar materials such as plaster boards or MDF must be cut and bent, knitted fabrics are inherently flexible.

The project investigates two means by which shaped surfaces can be developed. In the first set of experiments we looked at way by which the control of the needles can allow us to hold particular needles and so as to create asymmetries in the cellular structure thereby producing a bulging of the surface. This technique of three-dimensional shaping is inherent to the logic of knitted surfaces. However, because of spacer structure, the tuck pattern creates a series of restraints to this technique. The second set of experiments uses flat pattern cutting as a way of exploring seaming of individual surfaces to create form. Here, knit is of particular interest in the way that the shaped patterns can be developed. Where in weave the fabric is produced as a standard material then cut into the patterned parts, knit can produce the particular patterns directly on the knitting bed. Much as the knitting of a sleeve, the knitting pattern determines the shape directly as part of the material production.

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Pliability In order to control the geometry of the membrane a third set of experiments examines the way by pattern can structure the material and give a particular pliability to its surface. By developing consistent striations into the surface we looked at how these materials could allow bending. This makes the textile collapse in certain areas thereby extending the malleability and shaping potential. This specification of the textile structure allows for a greater flexibility around the curvatures of the wall and thereby makes the material perform specifically to its context.

Tests with conductive fibres knitted into the fabric to create a circuitry

Conductive fibres knitted into a spacer fabric to create a circuitry within the material

Actuation A fourth set of experiments explore the integration of conductive fibres into the spacer fabric. These experiments examine the ways by which the material can retain its threedimensionality while simultaneously creating surface matrix by actuation can be controlled.

Integrating consolidation In the final fifth experiment we explored means by which the textile surface can be further consolidated. In a set of initial studies we explored integrating steel members into the fabric as well as resin coating the surface thereby stiffening the material completely. This was further developed in a set of prototypes that integrate heat setting fibres into the fabric. As the textile is produced it retains its pliable and soft property. After production the textile is heat set, here using boiling water and thereby stiffened. The heat setting is not as resilient as the resin but still creates further stiffening supporting the spacer structure.

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Workshop with researchers from Cita and the School of Materials at the University of Manchester

Conclusion These material investigations were all carried out together with the School of Materials at The University of Manchester, with their specialised knowledge in controlling both knitting machine and the computer software running it. The knitting patterns that control the fabrication are graphic patterns within the computer software. This software is highly specialised, to be able use this within an architectural design context the next phase in the research point in direction of creating a platform that links between the space of design and the space of fabrication within the software.

Credits CAD CAM Knitting is developed in 2007-09 and is a collaboration between Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, CITA, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Toni Hicks. Constructed Textiles, University of Brighton and Tilak Dias, School of Materials, The University of Manchester. The project was developed with Karin Bech, Andrea Foged Trieb, William Hurley and Edward Lay. The collaboration is supported through a grant from Aase og Ejnar Danielsens fond.

References [1] http://www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk/index.php/architecture/the-worlds-first-printed-building/ as sourced September 2011.

[2] Spacer fabrics are used in the medical industry as well as in sports industry where the material’s ability to spread compressive loads is used in braces and padding. Braddock, S.E., O’Mahony, M. “Techno textiles 2”, Thames & Hudson, 2007. p. 86.

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Listener Listener is a design probe exploring the creation of material designs that merge the structural logics of a knitted surface with computation and actuation. The research project centres on the design of highly specified knitted membranes that incorporate computational as well as structural performances. The project explores the collapse of sensing, actuation and structure into one integrated membrane. Learning from the investigations into knit as a complex composite, the Listener project asks how the design of bespoke composites can become part of architectural design process.

The project is a collaboration with Shenkar College of Engineering and Design.

Interfacing design and fabrication Listener is the design of a complex and multi-layered textile membrane. By combining advances in intelligent textiles with parametric modelling we devised our own bespoke interfaces that link between standard architectural design environments (Rhino and Grasshopper), CNC knitting machine (Stoll) and simple computational steering (Arduino).

In developing the textile pattern and material specification for Listener we created our own interfaces between architectural design software and CNC knitting. Listener is developed across a diagrid base pattern. The diagrid defines the holding pattern creating a base diagram from which the deformations of the pattern can be determined. Responding to an imagined scenario of occupation and interaction, our aim was to distort the diagrid creating fields of varying intensity, suggesting a higher degree of responsiveness around particular areas of the body.

The pattern is designed using parametric software that allows us to interactively programme the design environment. By creating attractor lines we control the geometry by pushing and pulling the diagrid pattern to form a non-repetitive structure with local deformations. The location of each intersection point in the diagrid and their relative distance is used to define 33

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the length of each of the three-dimensional pockets.

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This resulting distorted diagrid is in turn used to develop a scripted interface to the CNC knitting machine. The knitting machine that we used is a Stoll machine that is run by an underlying machine code written in Basic. Bypassing the Stoll design software and writing directly in machine code allows us to create new interfaces between the parametric software and the Stoll machine.

1984 ROWS BLUE LINES : CONDUCTIVE THREAD WHITE LINES : TUCK CONTOURS

Diagram of the diagrid pattern: the two thick white lines illustrate the attractor lines controlling the geometry of the non-repetitive structure MAX ROW SIZE APP 60 MIN ROW SIZE APP 30

Considering materials as active In Listener the membrane is understood as active incorporating computationally steered events. In this way the project speculates on what happens as the materials we build our environments by extend into the sensing and the actuating. In Listener the computational is directly embedded into the material design. Rather than integrating substructures for sensing and actuation as secondary systems the material itself merges the structural and the active. The surface is composed of four different fibre types. Using Dynema, a high density polyethylene of extreme tensile strength, as the core substrate we it withholds the impact of the air chambers and creates a neutral substrate. Two different conductive yarns were used to enable interaction. On the backside a copper based insulated wire was used as a soft antennae acting as a proximity sensor. As the users move their hands across the surface they effect a change in the magnetic field around the antennae. This change in capacitance is then used as an input to a micro computer that in turn triggers a high pressure valve system making the integrated bladders inflate and deflate.

CNC knitting machine

A second pattern of conductive fibres are knitted into the front of the material. These paths line the air chambers at either edge. As the chambers expand and contract they make the conductive paths touch. This continual shift in material connectivity is in turn used as soft switches [1] effectuating secondary movement cycles that propagate through the material as self actuated waves. Finally, the three-dimensional bulges themselves are knitted in a flexible lycra based yarn. This allows the textile to expand and contract according to the triggered behaviour.

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The four fibre types are composed in relationship to the underlying diagrid. In the material coding of the surface each intersection point in the grid defines the layering and composition of the materials.

Programming behaviour The interactive behaviours in Listener are designed using a dedicated micro computer. The coding of the reactive pattern between sensing and actuation is directly linear each sense event triggering actuation. To be able to address the surface locally we devised a grid of individualised antennas allow the surface to be locally addressed. Much like a touch screen, the different areas of sensing were assigned different inflating valves so that actuation occurs in proximity to the sensing. In a similar way each of the inflating bladders is locally addressed allowing us to drive the textiles as a distributed system. The surface is run as a one centrally steered computational system. The direct relationship between input and output makes the surface user centric. In developing the system further our aim is to implement a cellular logic where each cell acts as an independent subsystem interconnected through its ability to sense and act to its neighbouring cells. This logic will allow us to devise the surface as holding its performative measure creating emergent patterning in its reactive system.

Listener: composition of different fibre types in the diagrid

Conclusion Listener reflects on a two fold integration of information based design systems. Merging the computationally designed with the computationally steered the encoded logic of the surface is present both as a principle for material specification as well as a way to control its reactive behaviour. As such Listener can be seen as an example of a new class material that is developed in direct response to the design criteria of their implementation. As performative materials these combine locally defined structuring as well as sensing and actuation.

As speculative probe Listener asks how such materials can be conceived and by which technologies we can imagine their production. In the development of Listener we have created our own bespoke interfaces for joining architecturally designed environments parametrically controlled with CNC textile fabrication. This allows us to develop our own information based materials created as an integrated part of the architectural design method. In the project Listener we have explored textiles as a model for conceiving and testing this new emergent practice.

Credits The project is a collaboration between Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, CITA Centre for IT and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation and Ayelet Karmon, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. The project relies on collaborations with Dr. Eyal Sheffer and Ami Cang, Knitting Lab, Textile Design Department, Tzach Harari, Robotics Lab, Yair Reshef, Interactive Design.

Listener: air chambers actuating the membrane

Listener: tubes connecting the inflating bladders

References [1] Berzowska, J., Bromley, M. Soft Computation Through Conductive Textiles, in Proceedings of the International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes Conference, 2007.

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Strange Metabolisms Strange Metabolisms investigates knit as a principle of construction. Exploring the structural logic of stitches, Strange Metabolisms examines means by which shaped and gradated materials can be made. Strange Metabolisms queries the formal, structural and performative qualities of knitted materials.

Strange Metabolisms is developed in collaboration with textile designer Toni Hicks, Constructed Textiles, School of Architecture and Design, University of Brighton.

A speculative imaginary As an architectural investigation Strange Metabolisms is the imagination of a performing city. Suggested as an urban utopia, the project imagines the making of a textile architecture, where knitted skins wrap, fold and pleat the inner from the outer, the intimate from the public. Strange Metabolisms consists of a set of architectural models. The models operate at scale 1:200 and are animated through simple stop frame animations. In their spatial and temporal unfolding Strange Metabolisms asks what the qualities and behaviours of a textile architecture could be.

A structural investigation As a structural investigation, Strange Metabolisms explores the possibility in knit to create complex three-dimensional structures. The models are developed on hand controlled knitting machines enabling us to direct and control every individual stitch. By developing the 37

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textiles as complex composites that combine structural differentiation with material variation, Strange Metabolisms explores the making of bespoke graded materials.

Strange Metabolisms explores knit as an open structure that allows the seamless merging of different fibre types. In difference to weave structures that are dependent on the continuity of the weft, knitted fabrics can entwine, graft, splice as well as completely replace fibres at any given moment. In Strange Metabolisms the models merge synthetic as well as natural fibres such as plastic, silk, steel and wool. They use the different strength and qualities of these fibres to articulate the membranes across distinct areas of relaxed drapery, tensile stretch and structural reinforcement. The possibility of changing the fibre types allows complete material control.

Robotic Membranes exhibition at Grand Parade Gallery, Brighton 2001

Models at scale 1:200: querying the formal, structural and performative qualities of knitted materials

The membranes are further articulated through the way in which the stitches form the fabrics. A key interest in knit is the ability to create non planar textiles. By exploring the underlying cellular structure of knit, the membranes incorporate three-dimensional bulges, slits and tubular folds. The use of pattern collapses an interest in decoration and structure as one performative ideal and provides a structuring of the surface. Stitch sizes are scaled changing the density, flex and structural integrity of the membranes as well as their porosity and translucence. In places the membranes splice allowing stitches to be continued in multi layered strands. In Strange Metabolisms these structural manipulations are continually adapted. The result is a highly complex material with a fundamentally variegated performance.

Simple actuations As part of the material design, the models integrate conductive and resistive fibres. These fibres allow simple actuations to be part of the material performance. As well as being structurally graded the membranes include areas that can actuate through heat changes and the switching on and off of integrated LED lights. In this way Strange Metabolisms merges the computationally performing with the materially structured finding ways in which these can be mutually supported.

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Made for movement A key interest in Strange Metabolisms is to explore the inherent pliability of textiles. The models come to life through stop-frame animation simulating fluid movement languages.

In each of the models the movement is instigated in its own particulars ways. The flexible membranes are held by dynamic armatures that extend and contract or twist and turn to allow the skins to move. The distinct detailing of each of the membranes creates the particular means by which the textiles fold, crease or stretch to allow for movement. Through the simulation of movement, Strange Metabolisms probes at what the quality of such movement languages can be and how this suggests a new vision of a built environment.

Stop frame animations of the models: investigating the spatial and temporal unfolding of a textile architecture

The idea of a metabolist city In Strange Metabolisms the simulated movement is a way of thinking a reactive architecture. Proposing the image of metabolism, the models query their interrelationships as a continual call and response of action and interaction. With gentle reference to the Japanese idea of the city as organism [1], Strange Metabolisms instigates a first consideration of these textile architectures as programmed. The project asks how this reactive architecture can be understood as a set of interacting subsystems from which a more complex responsive behaviour emerges as they are understood collectively.

Credits Strange Metabolisms is developed in 2001 for the exhibition Robotic Membranes at Grand Parade Gallery, Brighton. Strange Metabolisms is a collaboration between Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Toni Hicks, Constructed Textiles, University of Brighton. The project is supported by University of Brighton and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. The project was developed with Sigrid Bylander, Hasty Valipour Goudarzi and Nagy Awad.

References [1] Lin, Z., “Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist movement, Urban utopias of modern Japan�, New York : Routledge, 2010.

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Architectural Knitted Surfaces The Architectural Knitted Surface workshop explored the relationship between architectural parametric CAD tools and the CNC knitting machines. Following the Listener research project the workshop aimed to disseminate and open up the embedded research questions while expanding the territory of investigation.

Architectural Knitted Surface was developed in collaboration with Shenkar School of Engineering and Design and hosted at the Department of Interior Design, the Department of Textiles and the Department of Interaction Design.

Test model for prototype

The workshop Architectural Knitted Surfaces was an interdisciplinary workshop for professionals and students in architecture, robotics and textile design. The workshop was based on the research project Listener. Through the introduction of parametric 3D modelling, programming, robotics and textile design, participants were asked to design their own performative materials for use in architecture.

The workshop invited participants to work together in cross disciplinary teams developing performative materials using the predefined patterns allowing for direct interfacing between architectural design tools and the CNC knitting machines. Each of the new variations resulted in a non-repetitive textile pattern with local deformation. The workshop asked participants to manipulate the patterns and create specified variations, allowing the imbedding of electronic components and circuits directly into the material.

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The workshop focused on the development of a new set of diagrams allowing for the development of further material designs. During the workshop we were able to fabricate quick prototypes representing different conditions with different material specifications.

Knitted prototype: result from the workshop

Predefined pattern in an architectural design tools: allowing the participants to manipulate the patterns and create specified variations

The results of the workshop were displayed in the architects’ house gallery in Jaffa, giving a chance for the public to get direct insight into research of textile architecture. Imagining a tangible perspective for architectural knitted surfaces, the exhibition drew the outlines of a more sensual and particularly poetic conception of space, where extreme material specification allows the design of soft and interactive bespoke surfaces.

Variations in the predefined pattern

Testing the electronic circuits directly into the material

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Knitted prototype: result from the workshop

Workshop participants designing performative materials for use in architecture

Credits The Architectural Knitted Surfaces workshop took place in spring 2010 is a collaboration between Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, CITA, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture and Ayelet Karmon, Shenkar School of Engineering and Design. The project was developed with Eyal Shaeffer, Ami Cang, Amir Marcovitz and Yair Reshef.

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THE MATERIAL SKIN

Performing Skin The Performing Skin workshop was part of the Smart Geometry Conference “Informing Digital Design with Real World Data� hosted by CITA in spring 2011. Smart Geometry is a partnership between practice, research and academia, formed by members of leading architectural and engineering practices and educational institutions.

Performing Skin was developed in collaboration with Shenkar School of Engineering and Design.

The workshop The workshop Performing Skin explored the combining of intelligent textiles with parametric modelling. Refining the bespoke interfaces developed in the previous research and workshops, The Performing Skin workshop investigated the design of bespoke sensors and their implementation. Further developing the tools created for the Listener project and the Architectural Knitted Surfaces workshop, our aim was to create circular feedback loops between the design and sensing.

Participants were asked to develop their own performative surfaces in which the fabric acts as a sensor to its environment. By designing knitted-in conductive fibres controlled by micro controllers we were able to create live interfaces by which the environment around the surface could be read. The guiding question for the workshop was how this collected sense data could be interfaced with and used for material specification.

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Taking as point of departure the condition of humidity, the outset for design was in the making of membranes that act and react upon the presence of water. The workshop asks how to consider the idea of materials-as-active bringing new meaning to the idea design-as-steering.

Not only devising the distribution of material, steering also comes to mean the design of material performance across time. If architecture has traditionally been aligned with the permanent, the practice of thinking performatively sites architecture within an activated world in which the building itself gains the ability to act and react to its environment.

Pictures form the Performing Skin workshop in the Smart Geometri Conference hosted by CITA 2011, with participants from practice, research and academia

Credits Performing Skin was held in April 2011 and was developed in collaboration between Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, CITA, Ayelet Karmon, Shenkar School of Engineering and Design and Signe Emdal, Emdal Colorknit.

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THE ROOM: SKIN AND STRUCTURE

The Room: Skin and Structure In the following three projects the material investigation exploring the possibilities of textiles as a performative composite is brought to an architectural scale. The first projects Knitted Skins and Slow Furl investigate how textiles could be used as wall membranes. Both projects focus on the use of spacer fabrics as a particular material for architectural application, thereby creating synergy between the material investigations in CAD CAM Knitting.

A core aim for the two projects has been to understand and develop the interfaces for working with textiles as an integrated part of architectural design practice. Investigating the practice of pattern design and developing means of creating material descriptions, the projects create new techniques by which the wall membranes can be designed, detailed and realised.

The two projects both imply a simple division between skin and structure. In both Knitted Skins and Slow Furl the textile passively clads a compressive substructure. It is this division that the third project Lace Wall and the workshop Pattern Anatomies seek to question. Asking how the substructure itself could be textile in its material logic, using systems of tension and self bracing, the two investigation query how new interrelationships can rupture the tradition of thinking skin and structure.

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Knitted Skins The aim for Knitted Skins is to explore the idea of a textile architecture at full scale. The project takes point of departure in the material prototypes developed in CAD CAM Knitting and finds ways of scaling these to engage the body and a sense of the interior.

Knitted Skins asks how textile membranes could allow for the imagination of a soft space and how these fluid membranes could crease and fold in response to its programme of inhabitation. The primary inquiry of Knitted Skins is to consider how a textile tectonic could allow highly articulate formal languages. Exploring the inherent pliability of textiles, the project queries how the fluid flows of these membranes can suggest new spatial qualities in which the interior envelops its occupant in soft skins. The project asks what the quality of such a space would be, how these spaces could be devised and what the techniques that need to be invented to sew a textile room are.

Examples of skin and structures in aeroplanes and zeppelins

The project is developed in collaboration with Toni Hicks, Constructed Textiles, School of Architecture and Design, University of Brighton. The project is supported by Ă…se og Ejnar Danielsens Fond.

The imagination of programme: inventing scenarios for a soft space Knitted Skins is initiated through the invention of a set of scenarios by which a soft architecture could be imagined. The scenarios provide an imagery by which the particular performances and programmatic intentions of an architectural surface can be understood. In Knitted Skins these scenarios seek to define a relationship between the programmed wall and its inhabitation. We developed two sets of scenarios. The first scenario takes point of departure in the idea of a textile architecture as a lined space. Imagining the space of the 53

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dressing room, or a woman’s boudoir, the aim was to allow the thinking of an intimate space.

The boudoir as a term is established in the early 18 century and refers to as a distinctly female inhabited and female directed domestic space, where women dressed and received visitors in aristocratic houses. As a place of dressing and undressing, the space suggests a sensual relationship between occupants and architecture; a closeness between body and surface. In the 19th century these spaces were highly enveloped in thick textile covering.

Examples from France and Britain show draped rooms creating a sensuous and voluptuous space. Our interest in the boudoir as a programmed space is further developed in correlation with the image of the modernist bathroom. The modernist bathroom is a similar space of intimacy but with very different cultural connotations. As running water and toilets became part of the built environment, the bathrooms of the 1920s and 30s were stripped bare into the intense purity of hygienic smooth surfaces. As such the programme of the boudoir provides a tension between the soft and the hard, the enfolded and the smooth, the wet and the dry. As a scenario it suggests different kinds of interactions as transitional conditions blending slowly from one performance to the other. Merging bathing with dressing, comfort with hygiene, The image of the boudoir calls upon a graded material by which these qualities can be negotiated.

Diagrams of skin and structure for the office wall

The second scenario takes point of departure in the image of the office partition. The development of office landscapes in the late 1950s and 60s gave rise to a new typology of the partition wall. Often made as light-weight textile based screens, these walls provided privacy as a small enclosure cocooning a room within a room. These temporary walls are movable and scaled to fit into the room as separate elements. Our interest in the office wall is as a highly programmed membrane that separates the private and the public while providing surfaces for seating or resting. This hybrid wall morphs between furniture and spatial membrane in a fluid transform allowing one to fold apart from the other.

As in the scenario of the boudoir the aim for this programmatic investigation is to develope design criteria by which a graded material can be specified. In the office partition the shaped protrusions and folded slits allow for a compressed space inhabited by the passer by or in the pause between activities.

Skin and structure: a tectonic inquiry Examples of Boudoir and office scenarios

The scenarios provide a series of images by which the quality and language of a textile space can be imagined. These images provide basis for a tectonic study into the design and realisation of a textile interior. An initial question is how to make such an architecture self supporting. The pliable nature of textile materials creates a need for support or consolidation if

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they are to perform at larger scales. Where initial experiments with consolidation and resin impregnation allowed the textile surface to become structurally integral, this also meant a qualitative transformation of the material. A key aim is to retain the softness of the textile.

Learning from the architectural experiments of Verner Panthon, a second strategy for structural support comes from traditions of upholstery and as such are more akin to furniture than to the structural logic of a wall with its interior supports and exterior cladding. In Knitted Skins it is therefore examples from parallel large scale textile structures existing outside

Prototype of spacer fabric

3D model of the textile surface for the boudoir exploring the transition between the soft and the hard, the enfolded and the smooth, the wet and the dry

architecture that have been most inspiring. Learning early aeroplanes and zeppelins, these textile constructions are scaffolded by underlying armatures that stretch the fabric out and give it form. The structural logic of these constructions is furthermore seen as a conversation between skin and sub structure. Here, the skin stiffens the scaffold providing a tensioning that adds to the overall strength of the structural system.

Developing technique In Knitted Skins this relationship between skin and structure is point of departure for an investigation into the design and specification of these surfaces. Using spacer fabrics as a base material, we developed a set of models by which the spatial intentions of the two scenarios are investigated. The models are used as a platform from which a technique for the specification and detailing of the wall membranes can be explored. Developed in 3D, the models test ways by which skin and sub structure can be developed from the same threedimensional surface. By using developable surface unrolling techniques the textile surface was detailed as a set of shaped knitting patterns that can be sewn together thereby creating the complex form through flat pattern cutting techniques. The membranes are sliced into single curvature divisions creating complex seams that run across the surface.

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In parallel the same digital surface was used to create define an orthogonal sub structure.

The substructure is developed as a set of notched ribs slotted together in an egg crate structure. The surface and sub structure are developed as a tight fit. Like a glove, the fitting is shaped rather than stretched.

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Production drawings for the demonstrator: From left to right wood for structure and unfolded textile pattern for surface

The two scenarios are developed in different ways. In the boudoir scenario the slicing of the surfaces follows the three-dimensionality of the surface, allowing the patterns to flow along the body of the built environment. This optimises the scale of each pattern, but entails a structural complexity as the seams of the surface become different to the strata of the substructure. In the office scenario the patterns are defined in respect to an orthogonal slicing which repeats the substructures definition. This allows continuity between the two structures which ease their junction.

Rethinking substructure The design investigation of Knitted Skins was tested through the making of a full scale demonstrator. The demonstrator tested the developed techniques and allowed us to explore further the detailing of seams and fastening. The demonstrator develops the scenario of the office. Using an off the shelf spacer fabric, it is constructed as a two layered skin.

3D models of skin and structure 1:1 prototype of spacer fabric and wood structure

The relationship between the skin and structure is organised by the seaming. This vertical sectioning creating corresponding structural seam lines between the two. The sewing on of the surface also further stabilises the sub structure creating a coherence between skin and structure. However, the sub structure membrane does not directly interrelate with the skin.

Instead it holds a traditional compressive logic guiding the load vertically through its ribs.

This lack of integration between the two structural systems led to the formulation of a set of further lines of inquiry: how can the textile become an integral part of the structural support? Can the skin itself become structural? Or can the sub structure become textile. These questions have led to the following research investigations in Lace Wall and Woven Wood.

Credits Knitted Skins was developed in 2007-08 and was supported through a grant from Aase og Ejnar Danielsens Fond and through the sponsorship of Heathcoat Ltd and Hobbs Construction.

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Slow Furl Slow Furl is an architectural installation investigating the making of a behaving architecture. Taking point of departure in the design process and techniques developed in Knitted Skins, Slow Furl asks how a textile architecture would operate at full scale, how it could be animate and how it could be interactive.

Slow Furl won the interactive architecture commission InterArchTive and was part of the The London Festival of Architecture 2008. The installation was developed for the Lighthouse Gallery in Brighton.

Skin and structure As in Knitted Skins the relationship between skin and structure in Slow Furl is a conversation between the underlying armatures that scaffold the skin and the skin stiffening the scaffold, though the relation is challenged as the structure in some parts is dynamic. The structure relates areas of action with areas of stasis, shifting between one and the other along its length. The armature is conceived as a skeletal substructure where moments of its striation have calcified. As such, its structure relates the potential for movement actualised in its dynamic momentum. These spatial and temporal changes create a differentiation of the relationship between structure and skin and introduce a different logic for the relation between the substructure and the skin. The moving parts of the armature necessitate a skin that fits loosely to allow for movement; the voluptuously folds and overload of fabric within the design provide for this, whereas in parts of stasis the skin fits tightly to support the scaffold.

Slow Furl exhibited at the Lighthouse Gallery in Brighton

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The Skin: distributed computational system Slow Furl is a robotic membrane. The skin is in turn embroidered with conductive thread allowing for soft switches to control the continual action of its armature. As the structure moves the skin touch thereby creating a switching and unswitching of its circuitry. This continual switching actuates slight differentiations in the movement cycles. The embroideries further create a sense of surface description and shaping of the textiles membrane. As such the wall becomes a distributed computational system of interacting sub cells. The skin acts as a unifier. Cladding the whole of the surface, the skin joins the movement of the individual arms into one fluid surface.

Diagram: showing the contours of the surface

3D model studies of the voluptuously folds and overload of fabric Model studies of folds

The movement of the armature is self-activated. Rather than animating the surface through a closed choreography, the skin is programmed as independent cells. Each arm in the sub structure is driven by an independent stepper motor that is programmed according to its own closed loop. The movement is self-triggered and programmed to react to the closing and opening of the soft switches, creating an inherent reactivity that engages the structure.

Following its slow movement, the continual shifts in the anatomy of the structure becomes a repeated triggering of movements that give the space a behaviour rather than a movement.

The architecture is behavioural rather than interactive, motile rather than animate.

Slow Furl makes use of the same 8 mm spacer fabric as the demonstrator in Knitted Skin, but where this was developed to be a seamless skin where all stitching were hidden, the seams as now developed to be part of the expression of the wall.

Gearing slowness In the setting of the conceptual framework and design criteria for Slow Furl the imagination of the slowness of its pace has been defining. The choice of motors and gearing was deliberately done so as to accentuate the notion of pace. The gearing of its tempo has been fundamental to the design process. During the making of Slow Furl motors and movement scores, actuation cycles and differentiations within these were designed directly using the motors in question. The surprising result of the installation is therefore double. During the design process the substructure was evaluated without its cladding skin. The pace of the installation was designed to be at the given speed of the geared motors and is slow but clearly perceptible. As the skin was attached the movement seemed to vanish. Through stop frame animation the actuality of its movement was tested and seen to move, not only slightly but radically.

This creates an interesting finding which points not at the organism, which is the installation but rather at our own self as a sensing organism. The soft curvatures of the skin create a strange dilution of the movement, making it imperceptible to the eyes of the user. In the exhibition users were able to peak behind the structure at given apertures and slits thereby allowing them an understanding of the straightforwardness of the movement score, while simultaneously presenting a static presence.

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Diagram: moving armature

Slow Furl : pleated skins

Behaving Architecture Architecture is traditionally understood as a static envelop, where structure necessitate an inherently dynamics. Withstanding the continual impact of gravity, architecture must also account for wind, rain and the movement of its ground, as well as for the life that takes place within it. To think architecture as static is to imagine it outside its inhabitation. The lived building is a place of continual change, as its occupier’s moves through its cavities, opening and closing its membranes, switching on and off its amenities. The use of textiles in architecture is the opening up of the possibility to make a pliable, changeable architecture. In Slow Furl the architectural skin is thought as a dynamic place that communicates its state shifts with its occupation. Here, the skin of wall employs its pliability so as to activate its space, shifting deep furrows into its surface.

In assessing Slow Furl it is the relationship between skin and structure which is most critical.

In Slow Furl the skin has a performance in respect to the actuation of the installation becoming a unifying membrane that holds the patterning of the multiple arms. The structural 61

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performance of the skin is limited and instead very dependent on the substructure. The sub structure holds a traditional compressive logic guiding the load vertically through its ribs.

Model studies of structure

This led to the question of what could a substructure be, that is not dependent on a traditional compressive logic but based on a textile logic? Asking how to think textiles not only as a material but rather as a technology in the making of an architectural sub structure.

Credits Slow Furl is developed in 2008 and is a collaboration between Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Karin Bech, Centre for IT and Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture and the School of Architecture and Design, University of Brighton. Slow Furl is sponsored by InterARCHtive commission from Arts Council England, Royal Institute for British Architects RIBA, University of Brighton and Centre for IT and Architecture. Further sponsorship was received from Hobbs Construction, Bernina Denmark, Heathcoat Ltd and ACS Laser cutting.

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Lace Wall Lace Wall explores the traditions of basket weaving and lace making as a way of developing architectural structures. The project explores the technique of lace making at an architectural scale. Using extruded fibre glass, the project brings together traditional crafts and new high performance materials. Learning from traditional textiles techniques, employing self bracing structure in combination with the tensile material the investigations in the workshop lead to an understanding of a textile thinking in an architectural making.

Lace wall was made as a part of the student workshop Shelter, a collaboration between the London based design group loop.ph and CITA. The project relies entirely on the research and know how of loop.ph.

Self-bracing structures produced in the workshop

The probe Lace Wall is developed in response to the Knitted Skins project. Seeking to understand how more integrated strategies for skin and sub structure could be developed, the aim for Lace Wall is to query techniques so as to develop sub structures with an own textile logic.

The workshop explores how the technique of bobbin lace. Bobbin lace uses multiple thread ends pleating these together in a unified material. Learning from Loop.ph we explored how these structures can be used to develop complex surfaces that vary in their shape, structure and material make up.

Lace Wall uses extruded fibre glass as a material. In the workshop we made use of multiple material thicknesses allowing us to develop scalable models as well as 1:1 experiments. The 65

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experiments explored different strategies of pleating allowing the making of highly variegated materials that seamlessly transform in their structural performance from the very stiff to the very weak.

In Lace Wall we explored how lace allows for a continual adjustment of its three-dimensional form. By tightening the stitches in particular areas and letting others be looser we could modify the shape and strength of the wall. We developed techniques by which to thicken the material in certain areas by doubling the fibres and then splice these into a layered fabric creating further structural performance.

The making of Lace Wall

In difference to Knitted Skins, Lace Wall is a fully crafted material. Lace Wall lacks a pattern by which it can be specified. In making Lace Wall we developed a set of initial models using a drawing as a needle cushion by which we could structure the surface. Here, the drawing acts as a guide by which the material, its structure and porosity is developed. The models lead to the making of a full scale wall surface using a similar technique of production.

Credits Lace Wall was held in 2009 and developed in collaboration with Loop.ph as a part of a student workshop at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture. Laced dress by Stine Avlund and Tenna Beck.

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Pattern Anatomies Pattern Anatomies is a workshop exploring the idea of imposing weakness on a material.

Working with scoring, slicing, perforating and engraving materials, the aim was to discover the limits of material performance and to devise ways of creating our own new material designs.

Pattern Anatomies was held in collaboration with Marcos Cruz and Marjan Colletti from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

The workshop Pattern Anatomies investigated structural principles using self bracing, tension and flex.

The workshop used 3 and 4 mm HDF (high density fibreboard) as a base material. As a fibre based sheet material HDF is interesting as it is highly flexible and light weight while maintaining an inherent stiffness. Addressing the planar material two-dimensionally through laser cutting, the students were asked to devise their own strategies for cutting the sheets so as to discover how the inherent flex or sag of a material can be steered by imposing a new weakness.

A key interest in Pattern Anatomies was the way in which the architectural media of drawing, model and the realised are reconfigured by this new material address. Working with material behaviour enforces a direct material relationship. Here, the drawing is no longer representational declaring the spatial outline of the built, but rather a pattern by which the material is detailed. Working with digital fabrication, the drawing is furthermore also a direct instruction to the laser cutter explicating the way by which the material is addressed.

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A second shift therefore lies with the relationship between the drawing and the model. As the drawing becomes a place for developing the material intensions of an architecture, the model becomes the place in which the spatial implications are discovered. The model allows a direct incorporation of material performance. But where architectural models typically use materials diagrammatically to point at

Drawing: combining 2D and 3D modeling techniques

Model: exploring the relation between drawing and model

future realisations, Pattern Anatomies are held by their own material realisation and therefore essentially scaled in 1:1.

In the same way that textile explorations take place through the sample and the prototype, the investigation into material behaviour suggests new means of thinking the relationship between the drawing and the model, between the model and the built.

The material Working in a combination of 2 and 3D modelling techniques, the students developed their own computationally steered patterns. These patterns developed gradient strategies increasing and decreasing the intensity by which a material is undercut and destabilised thereby allowing precise control of material performance.

3D and 2D drawings for highly flexible and light weight component structure

The invented material designs were in turn probed in an exploratory manner. Creating large scale models, the students were asked to discover the structural and spatial proposition that these new materials could lead to. The interventions sought to exploit the materials at their limit, finding performance in the frail as well as in the strong.

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Model using the structural principles as self-bracing, tension and inherent flex in the material

Credits Pattern Anatomies was held in 2008 and developed in collaboration with Marcos Cruz and Marjan Colletti from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and Martin Tamke, CITA, as part of a student workshop at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation. Models by Sofie, Karl, Eva and Asta.

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Textile tectonics The last three projects explore the idea of using textiles to rethink the structural logic. The projects are a development of Knitted Skins and Slow Furl and seek to develop the interrelationships between skin and structure. The projects, Woven Wood, Thaw and Thicket, are closely connected and should be seen as a series of design iterations developing a tectonic system. Creating a pleating system where ash slats are set into tension bracing against each other to create a membrane wall, both skin and structure is textile in logic.

Learning from the Lace Wall project the aim for the three projects is to engage material performance and use self bracing, tension and flexibility for structural performance, while retaining the ability to formally specify and detail the structure.

The projects are supported the workshop investigation Parametric Weaving.

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Woven Wood Woven Wood develops the research questions posed in the Knitted Skin project. Exploring the potential of more complex relationships between skin and structure, the project takes point of departure in the assessment of structural independency in Knitted Skin and Slow Furl. Learning from the Lace Wall project, our guiding research question asks how textile logic of thinking material tension, flex and self bracing can be used for structural rigidity. By understanding textile thinking as a technology rather than a material, Woven Wood explores how to make a textile sub-structures for a knitted skin.

The project is developed through a collaboration with Tilak Dias, School of Materials, Manchester University. The project is supported by Åse og Ejnar Danielsens Fond.

Speculative sketch models: setting up parameters for weaving wood

The investigation Woven Wood investigates a tensile structuring of wood using pleating as a structural principle. Referencing Philip Beesley and Sean Hanna’s thinking our aim for Woven Wood is to understand how ideas of material tension and friction can become a way of creating integrated systems where “… every fibre has an integral role in maintaining structure, each as important its neighbour” [1].

The second investigation in Woven Wood is to understand how to create material specifications that allow for communication and fabrication. In architecture the primary role of the drawing is to create specifications by which design intent can be translated and realised.

However, as we come to work with material performance we need new drawing typologies by which these specifications can be made. Using simple parametric design tools that allow 75

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us to

Section of weaving structure

Woven Wood demonstrator: engaging the structural and tectonic principles of the weaving structure in full scale

us to anticipate the behaviour of the material, our aim is to allow design intent to meet material behaviour through an intuitive and interactive design system.

The speculative sketch models The initial question in this part of the research was: how to weave wood? To set up parameters for a weave construction, a series of models in paper and thin wood veneer explored different techniques and logics for weaving wood. To understand the constructional impact the scaled models gave a first impression of the possibilities within the weaving of flat flexible slats. These models led to several different design strategies as for example a double weave, which allow a greater spatiality in the construction.

The speculative sketch models explored a construction of a double weave enabling greater structural stiffness. By combining the overall pleating pattern with a secondary central slat we were able to make the models self supporting. These early sketch models became the basis of a first full scale prototype. Here, we assessed that the structure is strong when stressed, though there is a limit of how much it can flex before breaking. Within this stress range between being in tension and not breaking is one of the parameters for the construction.

The prototype Sketch drawings for skin

To define an exact stress range, a right scale empirical test is carried out to note the max of flexibility and strength in the material. The material mapping is carried out by testing the bending deformation in the ash wood slats. Testing the wood slats in various lengths under

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Bespoke 3mm lasercut steel joint holding Ø 1mm tension string.

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Woven Wood demonstrator from left to right: 2D drawing of ash slats cutting sheet for production and 3D drawing of steel joint connection Wood lath profile Wood lath profile 37mm x 3mm ash wood lath

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a range of load conditions to map out the “bend” create the empirical data set, which is abstracted into formulas of the using a law curve in the parametric model. The analytical and empirical approach provides valuable data in understanding the material behaviour.

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The data is incorporated into a relational digital model setting up a base system of interconnectivity between the differentiated members. Restraints and variables such as maximum material length, the variegation of density and the spatialising of the contour line allow control over the designed structure are generating a diagram, a strategic pattern for making and not an exact representation of the model. This is a known design parameter from the tradition of knitting and sewing patterns. In Woven Wood we use parametric modelling to incorporate an understanding of the inherent flexibility and tension of its material.

Digital fabrication

15mm

Geometry of laser cut steel joints 1:1 @ 800mm x 800mm

Joint Bespoke 3mm lasercut steel joint holding Ø 1mm tension string.

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Joint Bespoke 3mm lasercut steel joint holding Ø 1mm tension string.

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(5,338) (y)

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Coordinate drawing of curvature in skin pattern

Woven Wood: First test for making a skin for the structure

The full scale demonstrator The digital material simulation investigation of Woven Wood was tested through the making of a full scale demonstrator. The demonstrator tested the developed techniques and engages with the structural and tectonic principles of the weaving structure in full scale.

Woven Wood is made of ash slats braced together by steel joints. To join the wooden slats a metal customised angel joint was developed. Each joint is defined to the angel of the slats joining point, designed to keep the construction in tension and position. The joint ties to the wooden slats with a metal ring pulled over.

To build the demonstrator the detailing of the ash slats and laser cut steel joints are developed directly from the relational model. Strategies for direct specification and digital fabrication are incorporated in the digital model, informing the production of the cutting sheets to define the geometry of laser cut steel joints and the lengths of manually cut slats.

Developing the skin The digital relational model developed for the Woven Wood is as described above fundamentally different to architectural representations. Architectural drawings will have the ambition to represent the geometry of the structure thereby creating exact measured form. In Woven Wood the model is relational. We are able to calculate the lengths of the material parts, but their actual geometrical shape is unsure.

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(11.2, 54.2) (0, 53.1)

(3, 53.5)

(27.5, 56.1) (40.6, 55.8)

(19.5, 55.1)

(50.7, 56.4)

y (53.2, 34.8) (2.7, 30) (54.2, 25)

(17.8, 0.6) (x, y) (11.2, 0.5) Drawings of a 3 dimensional knitting test

(38.9, 0.1)

(26.3, 0.1)

(48.2, 0.1)

(54.5, 1.9) x

10 cm 50 cm

The first attempt to define a textile surface for the construction therefore has no defined understanding of the geometry of the structure it is needed to clad. To solve this we carefully surveyed the structure thereby creating a new model of geometry. This model was in turn used to develop the skin structure.

The strategy for the skin took point of departure in the spacer fabric developed for Knitted Skin and Slow Furl. For a full cladding of the construction different strategies for a pattern was tested out to try and develop a relation between skin and structure.

Conclusion The Woven Wood demonstrator opens a series of new research questions. Where Woven Wood is successful in developing means of digitally specifying and detailing the wall membrane by inventing the relational model, it simultaneously creates a new problem in the further specification of its cladding. This new question is fundamental the emerging practice of working for and with material performance. During the design process we considered a series of strategies for solving this problem. One strategy would be to 3D scan the structure to thereby create precise digital model of the structure. This method is common in building practice where large scale structures are continuously surveyed and drawings are updated during the construction process. A second strategy was to incorporate the material performance of the bending of the wood into the digital model. This speculation has been further developed in the Thaw and Thicket research projects.

Credits Woven wood was developed in 2009 by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech with support from Andrea Foged Trieb. It relies on a collaboration with Tilak Dias, School of Materials, Manchester University.

References [1] Beesley, P., Hanna, S., “Lighter: a transformed architecture” in Extreme Textiles – designing for high performance, eds McQuaid, M., Thames and Hudson, 2005. p 109.

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Thaw Thaw is a five meter high architectural installation investigating how textile concepts of friction and tension can be used for tectonic structures of architectural scale. Building on the findings in the Woven Wood research project Thaw explores the making of a pleated structure.

Thaw is developed for the exhibition digital.material at the R.O.M. Gallery for Art and Architecture in Oslo, Norway. It relies on a collaboration with North Carolina State University, College of Textiles and is supported by the Nordic Culture Fund.

The probe Thaw is made of ash slats braced together by steel joints. Like in Woven Wood, Thaw is a friction based structure where each slat is bent into shape pressing against each other and creating an internal friction. In Thaw each single member is inherently weak. The load forces move through a field of friction based interconnectivity by which the overall structure becomes stiff. This integral weakness allows the structure to retain a measure of pliability or softness allowing it to adjust to changes in its environment or in load.

Animation Thaw makes use of the material performance of wood. Cutting the slats from ash timber we make use of the particular straightness of ash grain which in turn allows us work with a minimal thickness and therefore a high degree of pliability. In Thaw we examine the idea of soft tectonics through an adaptable structural system. By continually adjusting the tensions 81

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wires that run through the structure, Thaw is animated. The tension wire are connected to a simple pulley system that alternately tightens and relaxes the wire creating an internal rhythm of expansion and contracting, inhaling and exhaling in resonance with its inherent material performance. varying vector length

128.41

128.41

varying vector length

during the design process we found that during the design process we found that the top vector is slightly higher than the the top vector is slightly higher than the bottom vector. The two vectors are bottom vector. The two vectors are therefore defined separately

therefore defined separately

simulating material geometry through parametric modelling

developing call graph from which new vector length is defined

simulating material geometry through parametric modelling 25.00

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developing call graph from which new vector length is defined

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A diagram of material mapping across platforms: testing the bending deformation in the ash wood slats and measure it out to understand the material behavior

The skin

Thaw: diagram of the construction of structure and skin

As an architectural installation Thaw is a part examination of a structural system. However, Thaw furthers this investigation through the integration of a second skin thereby addressing the question of enclosure and the assemblage of multiple materials. The second skin is a pleated manifold that is tied to the structure creating a diaphragm surface that expands and contracts with the movement of the underlying structure. The second skin is developed in a thick non-woven textile developed for the project through a collaboration with North Carolina State University, College of Textiles. The textile is developed to be stiff yet pliable creating a degree of structural independence while enabling the structure to move. The skin is further detailed through vertical perforations and embroidery allowing the surface a further degree of horizontal stretch while strengthening the material across the length of the surface.

Research inquiry: designing for material performance Thaw learns from early geodetic airplanes [1] as well as the light metal lattice structures by the late 19th century the Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov [2] while creating a new level of formal freedom by using computational modelling and digital fabrication technologies.

The aim for Thaw is to explore how computation design systems can include the simulation of the material performance and incorporate these as integral parts of the design system.

Thaw is developed using simple parametric tools in the form of grasshopper. To include the simulation of the material flex of wood we developed parametric models simulating the geometric deformation of the material. Based on a set of tracings of the material deformation we developed a simulation of the bending geometry by calculating the changing relationship between length and bend.

The structure is designed around a set of defined contour lines that shape the overall structure. Each slat is vertically sliced allowing for the interwoven pleating of the structure as a formal double weave. The design is developed using simple parametric tools in the form of 82

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Flex

Controlpoint trajectories

Principle for slats movement

Electrical motor

Tension string

“Skin”

Module elevation 1:10 @ 800mm x 800mm

Steel joint

206 mm

Ash wood slats

377 mm

Foundation

250 mm

250 mm

Section of “Thicket”, elevation 1:20 @ 800mm x 800mm

Drawing: illustration of how Thaw is designed as a relational model setting up a base system of interconnectivity between the differentiated members

Module plan view 1:10 @ 800mm x 800mm

Digital strategy for structural laths

grasshopper. Using the contour lines as guides defining the individual length of each of the slats as well as the angle of each of the steel brackets the shape of the structure results from their interrelationships. The design of the structure lies therefore with the detailed definition of the contour lines that in turn set up the fabrication drawings for both the machinic laser cutting of the streel brackets as well as the workshop drawing for the table sawing of the individual wood slats.

The model is also used to generate the complex and non-standardised textile patterns for the second skin. The incorporation of the parametric modelling of the geometric deformation resulting from the material flex is used to generate the flat pattern cut textile skin. The model therefore has a two-fold role. At one level it acts as a purely relational composition allowing the measurements of lengths and angles. On the other hand the model is used to simulate the material deformation so as to provide the geometry by which the second skin is constructed.

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Engaging performance through actuation In Thaw this attention to the pliable and the soft is further accentuated through actuation.

In Thaw the actuation is understood as a continual internal re-calibration of the structural load bearing. The structure is therefore not responding to a change in the outside environment but rather seen as an animate pulsing continually changing the state of the material flex. The structure moves in much the same way as a long bow. A set of servo motors are mounted above structure pulling the tension cables that are threaded through the structure. As in the long bow the diagonal relationship between the tension cable and the structure allows a small amount of actuation: the tensioning of the cable by 5 cm, to have a large effect on the structure: the horizontal flexing of the slats by 25 cm.

Conclusions In Thaw our interest in actuation is seen as way of questioning what happens as structural systems come to engage material performance. Thaw negates the primacy of the static and the permanent instead suggesting an architecture of change. Thaw is understood as a research probe and as such many of its propositions remain speculative and suggestive. As a spatial investigation Thaw asks how it would be to live in a soft space: what would the boundaries be and how could we develop design strategies for designing across time. As a tectonic investigation Thaw prototypes pleating as a friction based structure. Through Thaw we have found that these textile based structures allow for lighter and less materially intense structures to be imagined.

The unfolded patterns for the pleated skin

In Thaw the incorporation of a parametric modelling of the geometric deformation resulting from the material flex is used as a means of creating the geometry needed to specify the second skin. As such, the material modelling is used to address the structure’s further realisation of enclosure and material assembly. However, as a research probe Thaw is a prototype exploring how the incorporation of material performance can become part of a design system. In parallel projects we are now investigating how a structural analysis of material performance can be incorporated into the geometric design models creating feedback between structural analysis and design as well as between design and digital fabrication.

Credits Thaw is developed in 2010 by Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Karin Bech. It was exhibited as part of the digital.material exhibition at R.O.M Gallery for Art and Architecture, Oslo in May 2010. The exhibition was supported by the Nordic Culture Foundation and the R.O.M. Gallery. Thaw was further supported through the collaboration with Behnam Pourdeyhimi, NC State University College of Textiles.

References [1] Poulsen, C. M., “Geodetic Construction: Vickers-Wallis System Explained : Advantages of Concentrating Material. Balancing Tension Against Compression” Flight. January 16, 1936. p. 67.

[2] Graefe, R. “Vladimir G. Suchov 1853-1939. Die Kunst der sparsamen Konstruktion.”, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1990.

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Thicket Thicket is a 10 m high wood construction. The installation explores how friction based structures can allow the imagination of a new pliable architecture. Architectural construction is traditionally realised through a compressive logic. The orthogonal geometries of the traditional drawing tools, the parallel rule and set square, prioritise linear load paths creating resonance between the tools of design and construction. As tools change with the introduction of computation this core relationship is challenged. Computational design tools and the introduction of active models allow for the proliferation of structural systems that operate outside the compressive.

Thicket exhibited at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale in the Berado Museum

Thicket is developed for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2010-11 at the Berado Museum.

It relies on a collaboration with North Carolina State University, College of Textiles and is supported by Realdania and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.

The probe It is this opportunity that is explored in Thicket. Thicket learns from the two preceding research projects Woven Wood and Thaw. Where the ambition for Woven Wood was to develop the concept and design system and the idea for Thaw was to demonstrate its potential, Thicket was an opportunity to bring this investigation to the scale of the built environment.

At 10 m high, Thicket is as large as 3 story building, thereby creating a new perspective in the investigation moving from the scale of the interior to the scale of the tectonic structure.

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TEXTILE LOGIC FOR A SOFT SPACE Informing the Dynamic Simulation Model

By measuring and correlating the material behaviour of controll real life set ups with that of the digital realm, a relatively correct and plausible behaviour can be predicted. The digital model is i this case tuned by balancing out three primary parameters:

1) Bend Resistance: Specifies the amount a member resists bending across edges when under strain. A high bend resistance makes the mesh stif while a low bend resistance allows the mesh to act like a cloth.

Informing the Dynamic Simulation Model

2) Bend Angle Dropoff: By measuring thechanges materialwith behaviour of controll Specifies how and Bendcorrelating Resistance the angle of the real life bend. set upsA with the digital realm, a relatively correct mesh's high that BendofAngle Dropoff causes the mesh to and can be more predicted.

The digital model is i resistplausible bendingbehaviour at higher angles than at lower angles (such this case an tuned byisbalancing out three primary parameters: as when mesh nearly flat).

1) Mesh Bend Resistance: 3) Resolution: Specifies the the number amount aofmember acrossinedges Specifies times theresists meshbending is subdivided the when under strain.

A high bend Higher resistance makes theadd mesh stif length direction of the member. subdivisions more while resistance allows the mesh to act like a cloth. detail atolow the bend solution at the cost of longer simulation times,

therefore one is looking for a trade-off which will satisfy a 2) Bend Angle required level ofDropoff: detail.

Specifies how Bend Resistance changes with the angle of the mesh's bend. A high Bend Angle Dropoff causes the mesh to resist bending at higher angles more than at lower angles (such as when an mesh is nearly flat).

3) Mesh Resolution: Specifies the number of times the mesh is subdivided in the length direction of the member. Higher subdivisions add more detail to the solution at the cost of longer simulation times, therefore one is looking for a trade-off which will satisfy a required level of detail.

Simulation Settings: Bend Resistance Bend Angle Dropoff Mesh Resolution

= = =

200 0,3 8-18

Targets: Measured deflection under self load of real life set up.

Simulation 0 cm (initialSettings: state = both members) Bend Resistance = 200 Bend Angle Dropoff = 0,3 Mesh Resolution = 8-18 4 cm (dissipated state, 84,5 cm member) Targets: Measured deflection under self load of real life set up.

0 cm (initial state = both members)

13 cm (dissipated state,129 cm member) 4 cm (dissipated state, 84,5 cm member)

13 cm (dissipated state,129 cm member)

Digital simulation of the bending wood

In Thicket we examine this idea of a soft tectonics through the adaptable. As in Thaw, Thicket is animated by continually adjusting the tensions wires that run through the structure. The tension wire are connected to a simple pulley system that alternately tightens and relaxes the wire creating an internal rhythm of expansion and contracting, inhaling and exhaling in resonance with its inherent material performance.

Digita

Digita

The design environment Thicket is designed using simple parametric tools to integrate an understanding of the inherent material tensions present within structure. The models takes point of departure in a mapping of the material deformation as it is bent. The mapping is used to create an understanding of the extrema of material deformation allowing the definition of the model’s key restraint. The design environment is defined as a relational model setting up a base system of interconnectivity between the differentiated members. Further restraints and variables such as maximum material length, the variegation of density and the spatialising of the top and bottom connectors allow control over the designed structure. The design environment is then sited within a contextual model of the exhibition space allowing direct and intuitive feedback between system thinking and spatial design. The design intent is to develop the structure as a spatial enclosure allowing the audience to move within it. The model also incorporates strategies for direct specification and digital fabrication. In the first instance these are developed directly from the relational model allowing the production of the cutting sheets defining the geometry of the laser cut steel joints and the lengths of manually cut ash slats.

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Drawing of the relational model: structural system and cladded skin

Thicket is understood as a multi-material system in which the structural system of the ash slats is met by the folded cladding of the second skin. However, defining the geometry of the cladding skin created a need for understanding the geometry of the structure. The purely relational model used for the design of the structural system challenges the tradition of architectural design in that its representation is non formal. Instead form arises as a result of the assembly of the structure. But to develop geometry of the second skin the model needs to incorporation form and therefore the performance of the ash slats as they are put under pressure. This second level of the model uses the material mapping to develop a representation of the formal properties the wood structure. This formal representation is then used to develop the pleated manifold and then to define its specification for digital fabrication.

The weak and the adaptable In Thicket the idea of the weak and the adaptable is engaged through the mutable. The tensioning of the structure and its animation through the pulley system allows the construction to continually recalibrate its load bearing. In this sense the absolute space of traditional architectural design is challenged firstly by operating outside the formal logics of geometry 90

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Thicket

and secondly by conditioning design as an open state space in which the actualised is described as a potential. Thicket has an unsteady design intent continually shifting its weight and reconfiguring its presence.

Credits Thicket is developed in 2010 by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech. It was exhibited as part of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2010-11 at the Berado Museum. It was later re-exhibited as part of the 1:1 Research by Design exhibition at Meldahls Smedie, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. It relies on a collaboration with North Carolina State University, College of Textiles and is supported by Realdania and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.

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Parametric Weaving Parametric Weaving was a workshop exploring the intersections between digital design strategies and designing for material performance. Based on the research investigations in Woven Wood, Parametric Weaving investigated self-bracing wood structures.

The workshop was held with students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture in collaboration with Martin Tamke, CITA.

The workshop The workshop introduced students to the parametric programming developed for the Woven Wood project. Developing their own parametric models, students were asked to design structural systems using self bracing, friction and flexibility. Learning from the Pattern Anatomy workshop the workshop used 3 and 4 mm HDF (high density fibreboard) as a base material. As a fibre based sheet material HDF is interesting as it is highly flexible and light weight while maintaining an inherent stiffness.

Students expanded and developed the concepts and technologies developed in the Woven Wood project. Engaging with the material performance one student group discovered techniques of lamination creating glue composite changing the material performance of the HDF and making it highly flexible. Other groups developed animated architectures allowing the structural performance to state change. Working with sprung bow principle the structure expands and contracts with a pulley system.

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The workshop resulted in 5 full scale installations. The wall membranes were discussed in response to their material performance, their digital description as well as the complexity and quality of the spatial engagement,

Examples of student work from workshop

Credits Parametric Weaving was held in 2010 and developed in collaboration with Martin Tamke, CITA. The workshop was held at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture.

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Trajectory for centrifugal carving.

HL

Centripetal lines

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The following research outcomes have been part of the dissemination of the research project. The aim has been to develop a wide dissemination strategy engaging both professional and the broader public. The main dissemination has happened through exhibitions. The research follows a research-by-design methodology. As part of this method we have developed an exhibition practices through which concepts and technologies are tested. We distinguish between two kinds of exhibitions: - Primary exhibitions where we develop original work that is tested and evaluated in the exhibition. These exhibitions should be seen as primary research where the original theses of-searched and statements are formulated.

- Secondary exhibitions where we are invited to present work through reproductions and Local laced environment photos. These are more wide-scale exhibitions in which the work developed through the main exhibits are represented.

The following research outputs are all related to the research project and undertaken with leadership by Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen.

0

1:200 @ 80x80cm

10

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Primary exhibitions 2011 1:1 Research by Design, Research exhibition, Meldahls Smedie, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture.

March – April 2011.

Lisbon Architecture Triennale. Selected to show at the international triennale in Lisbon representing Denmark as part of the exhibition Let’s Talk about Houses: Between the North and the South, Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon. Oct. 2010 – Jan. 2011.

2010 digital.material, Exhibition at the R.O.M. for Art and Architecture, Oslo. April 2010.

Climate and Architecture. Exhibition of the installation Sargasso Fields, result of the international summer school Responsive Environments with Philip Beesley. Nov. 2010.

2008 Slow Furl. Exhibition of the interactive architecture installation at Lighthouse Gallery, Brighton. April 2009.

Digital Practice. Exhibition of research results. Mehdals Smedie, Copenhagen. March 2008.

Secondary exhibitions 2010 ACADIA 2010 conference. Selected to exhibit at the international conference exhibition Life:Information, Cooper Union, New York. Nov. 2010.

Architecture 10. Group exhibition at the Boutwell Draper Gallery, Sydney. March 2010.

Chapters in books 2012 Ramsgaard Thomsen, M. Building Liveness: Imagining Architecture as a Robotic Membrane in anthology “Textiles Critical and Primary Sources”, Editor Catherine Harper, Berg Publishers, to be printed Jan. 2012.

2009 Ramsgaard Thomsen, M. “Slow Furl” in Heinich, N. , Eidner, F. “Sensing Space Future Architecture by Technology”, Jovis Publishing 2009.

Peer reviewed conference proceedings 2011 Ramsgaard Thomsen, M., Karmon, A. “Listener: A probe into information based material specification” in Proceedings, Ambience Smart Textiles Conference, Borås, Dec. 2011.

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Ramsgaard Thomsen, M., Bech, K.. “Suggesting the instable: a textile architecture”, Textile: the Journal of Cloth and Culture. To be published winter 2011.

Deleuran, A., Tamke, M., Ramsgaard Thomsen, M., “Designing with Deformation - Sketching material and aggregate behaviour of actively deforming structures”. Conference Proceedings, SimAUD 2011, April 2011, Toronto.

2009 Ramsgaard Thomsen, M., Karmon, A., “Computational materials: embedding computation into the everyday”. Conference presentation “Digital Art and Culture: DAC09, UC Irvine, Los Angeles, Dec. 2009.

Ramsgaard Thomsen, M., Tamke, M., “Implementing Digital Crafting: developing It’s a SMALL world” 2009. s. 321-329. Design Modelling Symposium Berlin 2009, Berlin, Germany, 5. Oct. 2009.

Tamke, M., Ramsgaard Thomsen, M., Asut, S, Joseffson, K. “Translating Material and Design Space - Strategies to Design with Curved Creased Surfaces” in Proceedings 27th eCAADe CONFERENCE / SEPTEMBER 16-19, 2009.

Palz, N., Ramsgaard Thomsen, M. “Computational Material: Rapid Prototyping of Knitted Structures” in Proceedings of “Architecture and Stages in the Experience City”, Aalborg University. 2009. ”Textile Logics in a Moving Architecture” Transitive Materials Workshop, CHI Computer Human Interface 2009 CHI2009 Workshop “Programming Reality: From Transitive Materials to Organic User Interfaces”, April 2009.

Ramsgaard Thomsen, M. , Tamke, M. ”Narratives of Making: thinking practice led research in architecture” Communicating by Design, International Conference on Research and Practice in Architecture and Design, Bruxelles, April 2009

2008 Ramsgaard Thomsen, M. , Hicks, T., “To build a Knitted Wall”, in Proceedings, Ambience, smart textiles conference, Gothenburg, April 2008.

2007 Ramsgaard Thomsen, M. “Building liveness, imagining architecture as a robotic membrane”, in Workshop Proceedings of UbiComp Conference, Insbruck March 2007.

Professional press, catalogues and journals 2011 Ramsgaard Thomsen, M “Digital Material Practices: Adaptive Architectures for an Idealisation of the Soft”, Volume, Archis 2011, No. 2, p. 158-161.

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2009 Ramsgaard Thomsen, M “Textile logics for a soft space: The impact of digital technology applied to textile architecture according to CITA”. Domus Issue 927, July 2009.

Peters, Terri, “Interview with Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen”, Mark Magazine, Issue 22, Oct. 2009 Work presented in ”Smart Surfaces – and their Application in Architecture and Design”, Klooster, T, Birkhäuser, 2009.

Work presented in Ramsgaard Thomsen, M. ”Vivisection” in ”Installations by Architects, Experiments in Building and Design”, Bonnemaison, S. and Eisenbach, R. Princeton Architectural Press, 2009.

Profile article in Glynn, R., Shafiei, S. “Digital Architecture, Passages Through Hinterlands”, Digital Architecture Press, 2009.

Delfs, T., ”Den Tekstile Tænkemåde: Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen”, Kunstuff, 2009 (22) p.

18-22.

Vindum, K., ”Bevægelig Arkitektur i Bevægelse: Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech” in ArkitekturM vol. 1, Nr 3, 2009.

2008 Ramsgard Thomsen, M. , “Robotic Membranes, Exploring a Textile Architecture of Behaviour”, in ”Proto Architecture: Analogue and Digital Hybrids” ed. Sheil, B., AD (Architectural Design), Published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd, July 2008.

Work presented in “The Changing Room” in Responsive Environments: Architecture, Art and Design, L. Bullivant, V&A, V&A Publications. 2008 Work presented in Leach, N., Weigo, X., ”(Im)material Processes: New Digital Techniques for Architecture”, China Architecture and Building Press, 2008.

Conference presentations and public lectures (Mette Ramsgard Thomsen) Chairmanship 2010 Program Chair, Ambience Smart Textiles Conference 2011, Borås.

Peer reviewer Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, Berg Publishers, Oxford.

2008 Chair for Research by Design Panel, Architectural Inquiries Conference, Gothenburg.

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PUBLICATIONS AND DISSEMINATION

Conference presentations 2011 Invited chair Fabricate International Peer Review Conference, Bartlett School of Architecture, London, April 2011.

Keynote Smart Geometry Conference. Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, School of Architecture.

“The Sensitive Home”, Sensing Home Seminar, Museum of Applied Arts, Cologne.

2010 Presenting “Digital.Material” at INPUT_OUTPUT: Adaptive Materials and Mediated Environments Symposium and Exhibition. Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, Oct. 2010.

2008 “Thick time in Slow Furl” Conference presentation “Digital Art and Culture in the Age of Pervasive Computing”, Copenhagen University, Nov. 14. 2008.

“Living Textiles’ and the built environment” symposia presentation at ”What Future for Living Textiles?”, Institute for Contemporary Art, London, 23 – 24, Oct. 2008.

Public lectures 2011 ” Digital Practice: addressing material culture”, Staedel Schule, Frankfurt, June 2011.

“The Material Relation”, Design Life Symposia, Dassault Systems, Paris, May 2011.

“A Sensitive Architecture; designing for a materially graded Architecture”, ETH, Zurich.

2010 ”The Role of the Prototype”, Deutche Arkitechtur Zenter, Berlin, Dec. 2010.

“Fremtidens Materialer”, Dansk Arkitektur Center, Dec. 2010.

“Material Thinking”, Architectural Association, Tel Aviv, Juli 2010. ”Sensing Space: from robotics to material behaviour”. Invited keynote at the international symposium “Technologien für Architekturen der Zukunft?” Technological Institute Munich, June 2010. ”Computationally defined materials”, lecture acid, Danmarks Design Skole, May 2010.

“Seminar Shape-morphing Textiles” International Symposium at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, May 2010. ”Digital Crafting” Seminar Digital Architecture, Aarhus School of Architecture, May 2010.

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TEXTILE LOGIC FOR A SOFT SPACE

” Programming material: designing for material specification” public lecture at AHO Oslo Architecture School, March 2010. ”Programming Materials” Colloquium at Centre for Fundamental Living Technology, Institute for Physics and Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark, February 2010. ” Hvordan præger digitale redskaber praksis?” public lecture at JJW arkitekter.

2009 ” Hvordan præger digitale redskaber praksis?”, keynote at Arkitekternes Arkitektforeningens yearly conference, Nov 2009 “Material Intelligence”, Stockholm Architects Association, KTH Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, Stockholm, Nov 2009 ”Inhabiting a Soft Space: intelligent textiles / textile intelligence”, Center for Tekstil Forskning, Copenhagen University, Nov. 2009.

“Robotic Fields“ Australian Institute of Architects Tusculum, Juli 2009 “Textile Architectures” AA Architectural Association, London, Marts 2009.

“Textile architectures: Slow Furl and Knitted Skins”. Invited keynote at the internationale symposium Textiles, Ornament, Light and Interior Space, Kolding School of Design, March 2009.

“Material Computation, Computational Material”. Invited international lecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, UK, Feb 2009.

2008 “Digital Crafting: narratives of making” at University of Kentucky School of Architecture, USA, 29. Oct. 2008.

“Digital Crafting: narratives of making “ at Ecole Speciale d’Architecture, Paris, Nov 2008.

“Practice based research: experimental and reflective investigation” public lecture at Chalmers Tekniska Högskola, Arkitektskolen, Sep. 2008.

“Slow Furl”, Lighthouse Gallery, July 2008.

“Slow Furl: work in progress”, workshop talk, Copenhagen University, April 2008.

“Building Liveness”, public lecture, University of Manitoba, Feb. 2008.

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