F r o z e n _ F i b r e s
Tutors: Marta Malé-Alemany & Daniel Piker & Jeroen Van Ameijde
Team: Sanhita Chaturvedi [India] Esteban Colmenares
[Colombia] Thiago Mundim [Brazil]
‘...techniques that operate on a material level, if we need ideas, will
follow from techniques and techniques follow from matter...’
Gottfried Semper
Can a simple household craft facilitate a proto-tectonic system?
Our research aims at exploring integrated solutions that facilitate
optimised, adaptive and specific digital fabrication systems. The
possibility of materialising unified structures without formwork,
using the potential of the continuous mono-materials of the fibre
realm, directed us to the technique of knitting, as it inherently
possesses method, material and metaphor. The sophisticated
programmability of the proposed digital machine allows us to
develop a system which explores patterns, form and topology
to generate architectural solutions and define a new tectonic
language. The project explores the design of on-site fabrication of
structural envelopes and the integration of infrastructure.
Inspired by the beauty of natural systems, with their inherent
efficiency and performance, Knitectonics embodies a selforganised
micro system of textures and a macro system of
structure, is continuous and transformational, soft and rigid.