A pattern language

Abstract

RESEARCH QUESTION:

How can the methods and processes of fashion and clothing design influence the design processes and solutions of architectural problems?

Architecture and fashion have a long-standing relationship. There are obvious ties between the sheltering and protection of entities, but there are other complex relationships such as the translation of form from 2D flat materials into built 3D forms, that offer a great richness to architecture - especially in today’s age of computer aided design, drawing, and construction practices.

Pattern making is a simple methodology (adopted from clothing design and construction), which allows one to design, manipulate, and adapt certain ideas by an iterative process. A pattern is easily constructed, modified and re-modified time and time again, providing a designer with a 'collection' of pieces from a specific range.

As an architect uses a site (plan or model) to investigate the options and design possibilities latent in a place, the clothing designer has their mannequin. This project adopts this use of a 'mannequin' as a formal type of scaffolding, around which surfaces are distorted and manipulated through an iterative process, to see the possible solutions that this discipline can offer an architectural problem.

In this scenario, the site is a place of industrial ruins - a deteriorating 1900's meat works factory at the head of the Whangārei Harbour. The ruins provide rich skeletal formwork, in which an architectural intervention is readily accepted. 'The Paper Mill' is an industrial building, that re-animates the ex-industrial site in a contemporary manner, and the box-like factory forms provide a mannequin for skin manipulation studies, forming the basis of this architectural investigation.