The Design Lab is hosting architect Ayelet Karmon from Shenkar for a smart textile project. The activity in the Lab is part of an ongoing research looking at the implications of computation on the processes of design and interaction with the built environment. By integrally imbedding sensors into the material design of textiles, and continuously recording the fluctuating levels of light and human presence, the project seeks to explore the implications of integrated sensing systems for the design process of the built environment. The project is asking what is the value of this accumulative information for the design process, and how is this data informing the material and geometry composition of the design.

The fabrication process will be exposed to the visitors who themselves will influence the process, and will show the ways in which data is recorded and accumulated from the sensors and translated to become a knitted pattern using an industrial computational knitting machine in the space of the Lab. For a number of weeks we will knit different iterations of smart textile models demonstrating in their material composition the accumulative influence of the changing environment in the Design Lab.

The project is dedicated to the memory of Ami Cang

Acknowledgments: with thanks to Shenkar College of Engineering and Design for supporting this research through the funding of the "Rapaport Award for Creativity and Innovation".