Booklet: Slow Furl (2008)

Slow Furl

S L O W FURL Feb. 2008

Slo w F u r l Developed by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Karin Bech, Sofie Aandahl Centre for IT and Architecture in collaboration with School of Art and Design, University of Brighton Slow Furl is sponsored by Hobbs Construction who kindly CNC milled the wood construction.

Slow Furl is a room size textile installation that acts and reacts on its inhabitation. The installation exists as a soft and pliable skin that lines the space in the gallery. The skin shifts. As guests enter and move within the foyer, the skin moves imperceptibly at deep timeframes, creating new cavities and spaces, revealing slits and apertures.

Slow Furl is playful environment that engages the physical presence of its guests. Users are invited to touch, to sit, or lie, within its soft skins. As they do, they feel the slow pulse of its movements. As a landscape, a cloud formation or an ice wall, it forms and reforms around the body of its user.

Slow Furl is the making of a cybernetic environment that holds its own patterns of action and reaction.

Conceived as an organism of interacting subsystems, the architecture holds an own motility, an own language of movements, that defines its behavioural patterning. The skin clads a dynamic armature creating the possibility for movement.

The skin also acts as a sensory system. Active patches are embroidered into the skin. These patches act on touch. As the skin moves, it activates the micro-controller. The simple shift between self activation (through the movement cycles of the armature) and interaction (through touch

and movement of the users) allows the organism to engage an inherent indeterminacy.

Slow Furl won the interactive architecture commission INTERArChTIVE, exhibitrd at The Lighthouse Gallery in Brighton, England, june 08.

Slow Furl is sponsored by: Hobbs Construction, Bernina, Heatcoat and ACS

S L O W FURL Feb. 2008

S L O W FURL Feb. 2008

Like a glacier, this robotic membrane, is formed by its slow action, reacting imperceptibly to its inhabitation. The project explores the notion of flow. Rather than fixing the

aerial photography of slow flow of glacier

digital in a responsive relationship to the user, where every call defines a reply, Slow Furl finds its temporality outside the immediately animate. The thick skin envelops the space in a deep furl.

Drawing the actionlines

S L O W FURL Feb. 2008

The skin of the membrane is sewn in a knitted spacer fabric. The construction of the installation is defined through a CAD CAM process where

3D model os the knitted skin

geometry of the sewing patterns for the skin is defined. The process allows to design the surface as a 3D model, and then to develop the specification of its structures. The skin is laser cut and assembled by sewing.

Material process: cutting the sewing patterns, process of sewing, .

Drawing, cutting sheet for skin

S L O W FURL Feb. 2008

The armature is a ribstructure, designed using Paracloud.

Drawn in 2D pieces, then laser Armature is designed using ParaCloud

cut and assembled as a big scale 3D puzzle The armature is made in plywood. This light material is easy to cut and simple to adjust.

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Cuttingsheet for woodconstruction

S L O W FURL Feb. 2008

The Surface of the skin is embroidered with conductive fibre to create a circuitry within the surface. Each of the patches is then connected to a BASIC

photography of glacier patterns

stamp micro-controller that in turn controls a heavy duty servo motor running the dynamic armature. These patches activate the micro-controllers as users engage with the surface.

Close up of the skin. Embroidery with conductive fibre

Embroidery diagram

S L O W FURL Feb. 2008

The dynamic arms in the armature is hold by series of large scale cogs that are animated by heavy duty servo motors. Each arm is controlled by a stand alone microcontroller that activates its mechanical movements. The skin acts as a unifier. Cladding the whole of the surface, the skin joins the movement of the individual arms into one fluid surface.

S L O W FURL Feb. 2008

Slow Furl won the interactive architecture commission INTERArChTIVE, and was exhibitrd at The Lighthouse Gallery in Brighton, june 08.

Slow Furl was made possible due to a fantastic team of seamstresses and builders. Supported by Hobb Construction, Bernina, ACS and Heathcoat.

The team of builders

Slow Furl, june 2008, Brighton