Knit as bespoke material practice for architecture

Abstract

This paper presents an inquiry into how to inform material systems that allow for a high degree of variation and gradation of their material composition. Presenting knit as a particular system of material fabrication, we discuss how new practices that integrate material design into the architectural design chain present new opportunities and challenges for how we understand and create cycles of design, analysis, specification and fabrication. By tracing current interdisciplinary efforts to establish simulation methods for knitted textiles, our aim is to question how these efforts can be understood and extended in the context of knitted architectural textiles. The paper draws on a number of projects that prototype methods for using simulation and sensing as grounds for informing the design of complex, heterogeneous and performative materials. It asks how these methods can allow feedback in the design chain and be interfaced with highly craft-based methods of fabrication.