Thread of Thought: Advanced Textile Construction

Tamar Nix

Ayelet Karmon, Aaron Sprecher, MTRL Lab
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Curator: Anat Gatenio

At the exhibition ‘Thread of Thought’ that will be presented at Periscope Gallery starting on February 11, the industrial design Ph.D. student Tamar Nix, will present an installation that integrates art and academic research.
The research focus is digital design and fabrication of crochet, which enables the creation of complex 3D structures directly from yarn. Crochet is a textile handcraft with no industrial solution so far. Nix’s research involves a transformation of Crochet from handcraft to robotic fabrication. The research is taking place at the MTRL lab under the supervision of Prof. Aaron Sprecher and secondary advisor lecturer and architect Ayelet Karmon.
The exhibition presents an inflatable construction made of crochet textile and fitness balls. The crochet pattern determines the installation structure, demonstrating the potential for temporary buildings or shelters. This type of structure will be created robotically in the future, according to the vision Nix presents at the exhibition.

Periscope Gallery – Opening 11.2.22, Gallery talk: 25.2.22, Closure: 5.3.22
Opening Hours: Monday-Thursday 16:00-20:00, Friday-Saturday 11:00-16:00
Ben Yehuda 176 Tel Aviv

Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic are co founders and principals of HANNAH, an architecture practice based in the United States and Germany. HANNAH’s research focuses on advancing traditional building construction techniques by implementing new technologies and processes of making, addressing subjects of rapid urbanization and mass customized housing design. In close collaboration with the high-tech building industry, the office explores the implementation of advanced construction techniques such as additive manufacturing.

Leslie previously taught design studios and digital representation classes at both the graduate and undergraduate level at McGill University. Prior to the founding of HANNAH, Lok practiced architecture at various offices, including Saucier + Perrotte Architectes in Montreal, Pei Partnership in New York City, Santos & Prescott in Boston, and MADA s.p.a.m in Shanghai, among others. Lok received her master of architecture from MIT and bachelor of arts in architecture and studio art from Wellesley College.

Sasa pursued his graduate studies at MIT where he was the recipient of the AIA Certificate of Merit, a merit-based MIT full tuition scholarship, and a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Prior to MIT, Zivkovic studied architecture and city planning at Stuttgart University where he was awarded a fellowship from the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) from 2007–12. Zivkovic is currently an assistant professor at Cornell University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate design studios as well as seminar classes with a focus on digital fabrication, computation, and representation. At Cornell, he directs the Robotic Construction Laboratory (RCL), an interdisciplinary research group investigating advanced materials and novel construction technology.

Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic, “A New Robotic Brutalism” | Segoe Building, Benjamin Lecture Hall – 21st November, 2018, 17:30

Georges Teyssot is a Professor at Laval University’s School of Architecture in Quebec City (QC, CA). He has previously taught history and theory at the IUAV of Venice (Italy), at Princeton University’s School of Architecture (NJ, USA), and at the GTA in the Department of Architecture at Zurich’s ETH (CH). He was the curator with Diller + Scofidio of an exhibition on The American Lawn at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in 1998, and has written the introduction to the volume of Diller + Scofidio, Flesh: Architectural Probes (1995, 2011). He is the author of many books, including Die Krankheit des Domizils (1989), The History of Garden Design (1991, 2000), and The American Lawn (1999). More recently, he has published a volume entitled A Topology of Everyday Constellations, in the“Writing Architecture Series” (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013); and a short book on: Walter Benjamin. Les maisons oniriques, (Paris: Hermann, 2013).

Georges Teyssot, “Entropic Landscape” | Amado Building, Lecture Hall 234 – May 23rd 2018, 18:00

Schefferville is the global village of today. It is located in Northern Quebec, Canada, and is home to approximately two hundred and fifty people of the First Nations. It is situated at the heart of the territory of the Naskapi and Innu indigenous communities, and represents a unique form of extreme conditions, where the harsh climate is compounded with social, economic and political challenges.

The city was established in 1954 to support the extensive mining endeavours in the iron-rich land of the region. The local population was resettled in Schefferville to assist with these geological explorations, as well as with railway construction connecting the northern regions with the center of Quebec province in Canada. As a wider effort to advance the northern populations’ conditions, housing, schools and infrastructure were introduced in the region. These actions triggered a longstanding process of adjustment in every aspect of the life for the First Nations. In the course of this transition, significant social and economic issues arose. With the adjustment to a western standard of life, the local population was compelled to redefine its culture, tradition and heritage, and reiterate its intimate relationship to the land.

This reportage aims to tell the story of these extremities and the hybrid conditions that their collision produces. It also wishes to unveil the multi-faceted nature of this unique reality. Schefferville’s intricacy presents many images that are not what they seem at a first glance. What appears as a wild landscape, is, in fact, a trace of a highly engineered (and by now, abandoned) iron mine. What looks like an ordinary suburban house is often a structure locals are still struggling to inhabit and call home. These charged images blur the clear definition and distinction between notions of land and landscape and question what is natural and what is man–made, offering a twofold meaning and agency to both.

The Global Studio program is a collaborative initiative between McGill University in Montreal, Carleton University in Ottawa, Tel Aviv University, and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology.

We would like to give special thanks to the Azrieli Foundation Canada-Israel for their generous  support, making this important project possible.

Team: Associate Professor Aaron Sprecher, PhD Candidate Tom Shaked, PhD Candidate Karen Lee Bar-Sinai, MSc. Candidate Yael Engelhart, MTRLab,  Lubna Assaf, Amal Burbara, Oryan Hechtman, Yara khoury, Kobi Laham HaCohen, Maisam Matar, Sarah Murguia, Aya Omar Abo Saleh, Amit Sadik, Deeb Salame, Hanan Tansara 

Curation: MSc. Candidate Yael Engelhart | PhD Candidate Karen Lee Bar-Sinai

Drone Videography: PhD Candidate Tom Shaked

Exhibition Closing Reception – May 23rd 2018, 17:00 | Architecture Gallery, Technion Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning