Passao Ao Futuro: CRAFTSMANSHIP MEETS DIGITAL FABRICATION - DESIGN & BUILD
PLANT BASED WOVEN ARCHITECTURE
₍₂₀₂₂₎

 001                                    In the summer of 2022 I was invited to participate in a design and manufacturing summer school as part of Passao Ao Futuro's weaving programme. It was a productive collective of design students of all ages and backgrounds, from practicing interior designers to product designers and traditional artisans

 002                                   
It was a valuable experience to up-skill myself in both traditional craft practices and modern computing software

 003                                    The two week programme was planned to allow for a week of learning traditional weaving, and grasshopper computing software to design a shading device in the final week. We specialised in learning from two local artisans how to both harvest and process cane (Cana) from a nearby field and willow. The resulting structure was made entirely out of sustainable material, and could be remade when the panels had reached their end of their lifespan. The final design was constructed from eight panels with split cane to provide the shading.

 004                                    This was one of the outputs from the heat studies of the central courtyard in the Universidade de Évora. This was created by plugging in local data to generate a heat map.

 005                                   It was an invaluable experience to learn from the artisans, as it highlights the relationship between the maker and the material, something so important in architecture as the materials become more specialised and detched from its natural form to comply with building regulations.

 005                                   It was my first experience to work collaboratively on a design project with such an interdisciplinary design approach. it is an approach that I continue to use in my design work, as different approaches to design help to encourage more innovative designs.