Strange Metabolisms

A research collaboration between Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (CITA) and Toni Hicks, Constructed Textiles, University of Brighton.

Strange metabolisms is an exploration of knit structures in architecture. The project takes point of departure in the Knitted Skins workshops and develops the investigations undertaken with students. The project is the making of a city. Imagined as Manhattan like plots, the city exists in its own durational times coming alive through stop frame animation. The skins posit shifts between interiors and exteriors through their folds, protrusions, slits and layerings. Knitting together multiple fibre types, embedding armatures and small electronic circuitries allowing light and heat, the city is suggested through the complex performances of its skins.

Materials: polyeutherane monofilament, carbon loaded fibre, wool, perspex, steel and wood.

Venue
Strange Metabolisms was exhibited at Grand Parade Gallery , University of Brighton, January 2007.

Related publications

Ramsgard Thomsen, M.
"Metabolistic architectures"
In Metabolistic Networks, ed. S. Bonnemaison Sept 2007

Ramsgard Thomsen, M.
"Imagining a robotic membrane: architectures of physical computing"
In "Scroop, Synthesis, Vol 18", Cambridge Architecture Journal, 2006

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

Strange Metabolisms is also published in Responsive Textile Environments, Eds S. Bonnemaison and C. Macy, Tuns Press, 2007.