“Polythread knitted textile pavilion” may sound more like something Tim Gunn might ask his designers to go shopping in than an art installation, but it’s an art installation, part of Cooper-Hewitt’s design triennial, that uses 3D digitally-knitted (!) fabric elements, phosphorescent and drake yarns, twill tape and aluminum tubing. From the Cooper-Hewitt website:
Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial is the fifth installment of the museum’s signature contemporary design exhibition series. With a focus on aesthetic innovation, Beauty celebrates design as a creative endeavor that engages the mind, body, and senses.
From the website of Jeremy Sabin, the artist of this installation:
Mathematically generated and inspired by cellular networks, the PolyThread installation is a freestanding inhabitable form featuring knitted lightweight, high-performing, formfitting and adaptive materials. The digitally knitted fabric structure is held in tension with freestanding integrated fiberglass tubing…Material response to sunlight as well as physical participation are integral parts of our exploratory approach to the subjects of beauty and adaptive architecture. The knit structure is composed of solar active and photoluminescent yarns. This project aims to engage a new material practice and next steps in digital fabrication in architecture through the production of models and prototypes via cutting-edge parametric and associative software that interface fabrication technologies in related, but alternative disciplines. Advancements in weaving, knitting and braiding technologies have brought to surface high-tech and high-performance composite fabrics.
The results of all this poetry in (knitting) notion (see what I did there?) are certainly striking:
