THE MATERIAL SKIN
Made for movement A key interest in Strange Metabolisms is to explore the inherent pliability of textiles. The models come to life through stop-frame animation simulating fluid movement languages. In each of the models the movement is instigated in its own particulars ways. The flexible membranes are held by dynamic armatures that extend and contract or twist and turn to allow the skins to move. The distinct detailing of each of the membranes creates the particular means by which the textiles fold, crease or stretch to allow for movement. Through the simulation of movement, Strange Metabolisms probes at what the quality of such movement languages can be and how this suggests a new vision of a built environment.
Stop frame animations of the models: investigating the spatial and temporal unfolding of a textile architecture
The idea of a metabolist city In Strange Metabolisms the simulated movement is a way of thinking a reactive architecture. Proposing the image of metabolism, the models query their interrelationships as a continual call and response of action and interaction. With gentle reference to the Japanese idea of the city as organism [1], Strange Metabolisms instigates a first consideration of these textile architectures as programmed. The project asks how this reactive architecture can be understood as a set of interacting subsystems from which a more complex responsive behaviour emerges as they are understood collectively.
Credits Strange Metabolisms is developed in 2001 for the exhibition Robotic Membranes at Grand Parade Gallery, Brighton. Strange Metabolisms is a collaboration between Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Toni Hicks, Constructed Textiles, University of Brighton. The project is supported by University of Brighton and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. The project was developed with Sigrid Bylander, Hasty Valipour Goudarzi and Nagy Awad. References [1] Lin, Z., “Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist movement, Urban utopias of modern Japan�, New York : Routledge, 2010. 41
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