Shaping textiles : an investigation from two-dimensional surfaces to three-dimensional spatial organisations

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.The research investigates the interactions between the materiality of textiles, body and space through an expanded field in their application for spatial organisation. The exploration of knitting techniques enables the study to examine through material thinking and practice, the possibilities of how textiles can be applied to spatial form making with and without the influence of the body. By defining textiles as stand-alone structures, the research offers through practice, methods regarding the evolution of two-dimensional geometric surfaces and their transference and construction into three-dimensional forms. The practical work explores technical processes in working with textiles and chemicals, flexibility and rigidity that initiate new concepts for form finding. The experimental methodology adopted for the research initiates processes of rethinking how textiles can build new relationships to the human body and its motion. Here, the notion surfaces where textiles can metaphorically be described or accustomed to being ‘performers’ able to metamorphose through the forces of the body and its movement. The outcome of this study seeks to build relationships between body and movement, textiles and form towards formulating spatial applications for knitted structures. As a result, the research is an experimentation with and without the body, which situates textiles between surfaces and forms