Seetal Solanki - Urban Fabrication

Biography

Seetal Solanki is a textile designer from the UK currently challenging textiles through urban regeneration.

Specialising in constructed and multi media approaches to textiles, Seetal is creating an interactive facade for spaces and buildings that are considered as neglected and abandoned.

Prior to her MA Design for Textile Futures she graduated from Loughborough School Of Art and Design in 2004 where she specialised in different mediums and materials such as plywood, latex, and cork for interior and exterior spaces based on architecture and sculptural 3D forms. This project included manipulation of different materials through flocking, laser cutting, laser etching, laser welding and digital design.

Recent Places of work have included an internship at Nissan Design Europe in the colour and trim department, researching trends and creating trends for interiors along with materials and techniques. UVA (United Visual Artists) where she worked as an Interactive Designer working on projects from V&A, Milan, Las Vegas, onedotzero creating visuals and architectural displays and interactions. Hussein Chalayan was all about laser cutting pattern pieces, which was part of Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer collection 2007.

Seetal has a very broad scoped sense of design, this includes skills such as illustration, animation, film, graphics, textiles, fashion, photography and digital design.

Final Project

I am exploring the possibilities and scope for textiles to be integrated within architecture by exploring wind technologies and textile techniques. I propose to develop outdoor textiles that interact and respond to the weather pattern creating a second skin, re-cladding and fabricating a building through positive and negative designs. This will be integrated through the exterior and interior.

Keywords

urban, fabrication, derelict, smart, architecture, facade, second skin

Research Question

How can textiles challenge the way we interact with the environment?

Rationale & Context

Textiles within architecture is a huge area currently being explored by many different designers and architects. This relationship is merging and becoming an interactive society. In the future I imagine beautifying once forgotten places and turning them into icons in their own right. From designing on iconic places such as The Hayward Gallery to intimate spaces and places. The textiles would act as an intelligent skin that could interact with different weather patterns from touch to movement. It would almost act as hair on a building that would grow with different stages of the weather. The sun will help the growth as it will nurture it and throughout the winter months the growth will stop and just interact with movement. Acting almost as goose pimples on the skin of the building. The overgrowth could be trimmed and this excess could be used within the interiors, therefore allowing for no waste to occur. Technology would play a key part in this environment as well as relying on the powers of nature. Sensors, solar panels and wind technologies could generate energy, which then could act as electricity for the building so the building as a whole is self-smart.

Textiles in the past were regarded more as a craft and skill that designers would posses. The amount of textiles that is used in our everyday lives has increasingly changed our perception of what textiles actually are and what the possibilities are. This project has changed my view of textiles as a designer and I suspect that it will change the view of the general public. As a whole, this project attempts to demonstrate that textiles present an increasingly fascinating and invaluable resource for architecture as well as for our complicating cities and for the humanity they are spinning into the future. ?The dynamic exchanges taking place between architecture and textiles are creating a new range of possibilities that take both disciplines in exciting new directions. Not only does today?s generation of textiles provide new inspiration for architects, it also presents future possibilities for urban planners and developers. As buildings, public space and landscapes are reconceived as a single expression, the potential to experience the cityscape as a tactile arena could change our experience of architecture forever?

My collection fits the question in hand in its attempt to interact with the built environment and it answers many other valid questions throughout the course of the project. I hope the relationship between architecture and textiles are such an integral part of the future so much so that one could not live without the other.

Material/ Technology

*Photographic Filters, Gel Filters. (Sponsored by LEE Filters http://www.leefilters.com ). *Laser Cutting *Perforated aluminium sheets

Images

Links

• http://www.philipbeesley.com/
• http://www.uva.co.uk
• http://www.heatherwick.com/index.php
• http://www.smoothware.com/danny/
• http://nedkahn.com/

Contact

*Website http://www.seetalsolanki.com http://www.architectureweek.org.uk/event.asp?eventURN=4167

*email seetalsolanki@hotmail.com

*mobile +44 (0)7793 209 964