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Project

Living Knitwork Pavilion

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Irmandy Wicaksono

 Irmandy Wicaksono

One of the highlighted projects merging technology with the beauty and craftsmanship of fine arts, the Living Knitwork Pavilion recently received the 2023 Black Rock City Honoraria Art Grant from the Burning Man Organization.

Textiles are unique materials that could imbue the natural and built environment landscape with fluidity, softness, and a dynamic quality. By drawing inspiration from the artistry and construction techniques used in traditional textiles, as well as the notion of a pavilion or pagoda serving as a communal space, we aim to infuse a new perspective of technical textiles by fusing novel materials, sensing technologies, and digital fabrication processes to build a large-scale interactive textile, while also integrating them with intricate details and avenues for self-expression. 

The Living Knitwork Pavilion is a customized and modular textile shade structure (dodecagonal pyramid: 18ft high and 26ft wide) consisting of 3D-knitted optically and electrically-active yarns that sense activities and dynamically change color and light up through the day and night.  During sunny days, hidden patterns of humans, nature, flora-fauna, and synthetic beings inspired by the future worlds are revealed through photochromism. The pavilion, working as a shade structure by day and responsive lantern by night, serves as a communal place. Our presence, movements, and environmental changes constantly contribute toward the entire glow, visual effects, and ambiance of the space, as they are reprojected onto the pavilion as living memories, fostering and amplifying moments of discovery, reflection, and connectedness. 

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Irmandy Wicaksono/Judyta Maria Cichoka

The novel approach of 3D-knitting, this time applied in electronic and responsive textiles at an architectural scale, is an additive manufacturing process starting from a collection of functional and common yarns as design primitives, including conductive, photochromic and luminous yarns. Every Knitwork petal is carefully designed with mesh-like openings to allow lights and wind to pass through, popped-up tactile patterns to create textile reliefs, melting-yarns for hardening or thermoforming process, and custom channels and seam details for sailing rope and electrical cabling insertions. The entire process enables the building of custom multi-layer aesthetic-technical textiles with unique forms and textures and minimal waste. We take pride in incorporating recycled materials into this large-scale textile art, with 60% of our yarns derived from recycled plastic bottles. The Living Knitwork Pavilion is also powered by the Solar Library, an effort to reduce generators and noise on playa through the use of renewable energy sources. 

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Irmandy Wicaksono

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Irmandy Wicaksono/Gabriela Advincula

The central structure of the pavilion is composed of an asymptotic lattice discretized network of timber elements designed to optimize structural integrity while minimizing material usage.  By tailoring the lattice and joint designs to form "curves", the central structure seamlessly blends with the knitwork, amplifying a sense of fluidity and harmony to the entire pavilion. Embedded within the twelve Knitwork petals is a distributed network of thereminic antennas, constructed from knitted conductive yarns. These antennas couple with each other and pick up an electrical field emitted by the central structure, allowing them to detect non-contact gestures and drive an immersive experience through audio and lighting system. 

With the Living Knitwork Pavilion, we would like to exemplify the remarkable possibilities that arise when architecture, technology and textile arts converge and bring communities together. Through new materials, digital fabrication techniques, and a deep appreciation for cultural symbolism, we invite all of you to take shelter, engage, interpret, and be enveloped in a celestial tapestry of light, color and textile wonders. 

Living Knitwork Pavilion team

Project Lead and Artist Irmandy Wicaksono
Textile Design Irmandy Wicaksono and Gabriela Advincula
Textile Engineering and Fabrication Irmandy Wicaksono
Structural Design and Engineering Alfonso Parra Rubio and Judyta Cichoka
Hardware Design and Engineering Sam Chin and Irmandy Wicaksono
Musical Mapping Manaswi Mishra
Building Support Erik Strand, Nicole Bakker, and Age van der Mei
Design Support Tongge Yu and Angelica Zhang

This project is possible thanks to Burning Man Arts, Responsive Environments Group, Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT Media Lab + School of Architecture and Planing, and Phage/the Institute.

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Irmandy Wicaksono

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Irmandy Wicaksono/MIT Media Lab

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Irmandy Wicaksono

Living Knitwork Pavilion installation in Black Rock City, Nevada