Knitted Skins (2006)

A workshop collaboration between CITA (Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen) and Toni Hicks, Constructed Textiles, University of Brighton

Part of Workshop Series Robotic Membranes with students from Department 2, Royal School of Architecture and the Textiles Department, Danmarks Design School.

The workshop explores the making a hybrid lying between the garment and the built. Questioning the idea of the bespoke we will introduce the thinking of a membrane that engages the body and the city. If the city exists as the meeting of all the desires, actions, reactions and perceptions of its inhabitants, how can we explore the inhabitant as *user*?

The workshop investigates the intersections between the notion of a close interior [the fittingroom] and how it engages, changes and confronts the city. Working across the scales of 1:1 and 1:50 we built prototypes for thinking a performative architecture that attains its own interior stateshifts. The workshop explores high-performance yarn types such as polyeutherane, Kevlar, Teflon and carbon fibre. Finding ways of creating structural integrity it explores the use of resins, silicones, rubbers, heat fixing as well as traditional techniques of felting, sewing, laminating, materials.