Saturday, November 7, 2009

'Archi-textiles' at the Cardiff School of Architecture (the most overdue blog post in the world....... )

This has probably got to win an award for the most overdue blog post......

In April/May this year I was delighted to be invited to contribute to a 'Vertical Studio' module at the Welsh School of Architecture, where first and second year students work together in groups of ten on a short 'out of the ordinary' project.

I worked with Dr Wayne Forster to devise a 'mini-Bauhaus' series of workshops whereby the students were encouraged to analyse the cornerstone's of textile design - colour, texture, pattern and structure. It was hugely interesting to see how well they responded to the briefs and they produced extraordinary work of real quality. It was particularly heart-warming for me to see how much they enjoyed the weave workshop! Half thought I might have recruited a few to switch to the textile degree I teach on in the West Wales School of the Arts as some of them were so enthusiastic!!!

After the four workshops the students had just a few days to each complete a 'wonder wall' conceptual structure for a final exhibition. They were asked to consider transparency, opacity, reveal/conceal, and the various structure/colour/texture/pattern elements covered in the workshops. I was blown away by what they produced in such a short space of time without compromise on scale, ambition and conceptual weight. Amazing stuff.

I took a huge number of photo's recording their progress. Its hard to edit them down to share with you on this blog, but anyway, here is a small selection showing what they produced in just four weeks....

(NB: please respect the creators copyright of the work and remember to not reproduce any of the images without asking permission - thank you)

The Architextiles team, sitting in front of the first body of work exploring colour theory.








Textural studies:



The weave workshop:







The final exhibition of the ten 'wonder-wall' structures.....











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