Project by Delia Dumitrescu and Anna Persson.

Touching Loops is a collection of three different knitted materials with structure-changing surfaces. The collection is the result of an exploration in interactive tactile properties for knitted textiles. As a first experiment, different yarns were tried out for their ability to change structure due to heat in several knitted constructions. The experiment resulted in three different material prototypes with the ability to sense touch and react by shrinking, breaking or hardening. The aim of the project is to explore new possibilities for interactive tactile knitted materials and structures. In the discussion we relate to these textile structures as possible materials in the context of architecture.

Further developments:

– the open material in the Glimpses collection http://www.smarttextiles.se/se/textilamaterialbiblioteket/glimpses : two designs of the Touching Loops collection were selected and reduced; those heat transformable knitted structures can be used for other designers to experiment with heat transformable patterns.

-the open material concept was further explored as pattern and 3D form design; the new project Patterning with Heat: transformable tension textile structures addresses current issues in material research for the architectural field. The project was developed in collaboration with Felecia Davis, PhD candidate, MIT,Design and Computation Group http://architecture.mit.edu/computation/news/patterning-heat-responsive-textile-structures