The urchins by Jin Choi and Thomas Shine architects

 

The Urchins were created Jin Choi and Thomas Shine in response to a call for art for the 2017 iLight Marina Bay, Singapore, which had the theme for the festival of Biomimicry and sustainability. 

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This project is inspired by sea urchin shells, which are enclosed yet light weight, delicate and open.  Their textured and permeable surface interacting with light creates openness, while the pattern’s mathematical repetition brings visual rhythm and harmony.  Against light, the sea urchin natural form reveals one of the most spectacular patterns found in nature.

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The project mimics this orderly, repetitive pattern and soft forms, achieving a visual harmony from the contrast between nature and the man-made environment, and between the firmly grounded masculine skyscrapers and the hovering feminine object.

The Urchin is a hand crochet fabric shell held in tension over an aluminum frame that is suspended from Dyneema cables.  The cables fasten to steel trusses holding the Urchins in place.  Because the structure is light weight, the suspending cables are thin, and barely visible during the day.

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The crochet fabric shell is constructed of 3mm white double braided polyester chord, illuminated by multiple white spot lights, creating the illusion of an evenly glowing structure.  Each Urchins skin is use about 17.000 meters of polyester cord, with each urchin weighing about 100kg. 

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The Urchins were designed for simple installation, and are composed of 20 segmented panels, which are joined to a series of metal ribs at ground level at the site, and later fastened to a top and bottom ring once suspended.  Once assembled, the Urchins are hoisted to the final display height and secured in place.

The development of the project took about two and a half months. It included the development of the lace design and the support structure for the construction. Most of the original lace designs come from Dilmond's Needlepoint Made Lace published in 1890 and modified by Jin Choi to use the crochet as a lace instead of embroidery needle. For the construction and assembly of the crochet project in the support structure, 50 people from all over the world needed to work intensively for another two and a half months. 

 

Source: http://choishine.com/UrchinsFabrication.html , http://choishine.com/urchins.html

Summer crochet inspiration

Crochet is perfect for the summer. Get inspired by the catwalks and create gorgeous tops, jackets, dresses and bags!

 Rachel Comey

 Rachel Comey

 

Missoni

 

Missoni

Anna Sui

 Etro

 Oscar de la Renta

Rodarte

Miu Miu

Delicate crochet jewelry inspired by nature

Japanese artist Miho Fujita crafts delicate crochet jewelry inspired by natural wonders. Each accessory presents Fujita’s interest in nature-based creation and her penchant for reimagining plants as wearable works of art.
Ranging from elegant drop earrings to bold brooches, Fujita creates a wide array of one-of-a-kind statement pieces. Similarly, she finds inspiration in the outdoors, and works predominantly with nature-inspired designs. Her muses include ample organic objects, like fragile leaves, clustered sprouts, bunches of mushrooms, and sprigs of berries. Each piece is either left untouched or is colored with natural dyes made from plants. This use of natural dyes results in a collection of beautiful pale pigments and further emphasizes Fujita’s innate interest in the organic.

Source: mymodernmet.com

Kwangho Lee - knitting and art

Korean designer and artist Kwangho Lee creates unique handcrafted furniture, lighting, and jewelry by transforming traditional techniques and using uncommon materials. Among others, he has developed a new way of knitting industrial materials to develop lamps from tangles of extension cords and couches made from woven garden hoses.
The 35-year-old artist grew up on his grandparents’ farm where he got inspired by his grandmother’s knitting projects and the homewares his grandfather handcrafted, created them from leftover and everyday materials found on the farm. He graduated 2007 from the Hongik University in Metal Art & Design and now lives in Seoul.
Kwangho Lee`s work is part of the permanent collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has been shown in a diverse solo and group exhibitions worldwide.

Source: www.myknitaffair.com
See more of his work here.
Photo credit: via Kwangho Lee

Summer 2019 hot trend: Openwork & lace

Openwork and lace stitches are hot trend for spring/summer 2019.
Get inspired by the catwalks and knit gorgeous sweaters, dresses ans shawls:

 

Altuzarra

 Malene Birger

 Christian Dior

 Christian Dior

 Missoni

Philip Lim

Ports 1961

Self-Portrait

 Sonia Rykiel

  Sonia Rykiel

 Sonia Rykiel

 Victoria Beckam 

Chloé

Virtuoso With Yarn: Brooklyn Man Breaks Stereotypes Knitting On The Subway

A Brooklyn man is turning heads on the subway – all because of a needle and thread.
Every day, he is helping to break the stereotype by proving that knitting isn’t just for grannies, CBS2’s Steve Overmyer reports in this week’s Snapshot New York.
For many New Yorkers, the train is a second home.
“This is where I spend most of my time. You know traveling, it’s an hour going to work, an hour coming home from work,” Louis Boria told Overymer.

Boria is a modern artist, and his most famous work is done 100 feet underground.
“I get comments, both women and men staring at me for like 10-15 minutes. They’re like, ‘So what are you making?’” he said.
Inside the steel shell of a subway car rides a virtuosos with yarn.
“I always carried my project in my bag and never wanted to knit once on the train, because I was fearful of being judged because I’m a guy. ‘Oh, look at this guy knitting.’” he said. “I’m wasting my time and I could be knitting, and as much as I wanted to knit.
“That first time that I took that project out of my bag and I started knitting, I remembered that zone that it took me to,” he added. “And once I got into that zone, I forgot about my surroundings.”
Boria was spotted by Broadway star Frenchie Davis, who posted a photo on Facebook, resulting in a response that changed his life.
“The power of social media,” he said. “I tell you, it’s pretty awesome.”
Steve Overmyer: “What was it like to see that flurry of comments underneath that photo?”
Louis Boria: “I couldn’t understand it. They can’t make the correlation between the knitting and the guy – the guy in the sweats. And they see a guy sitting there, and he’s got tattoos and he’s got a full beard and then he’s got a baseball cap and he just looks like your average Joe on the street.
“You always ask that big question in life: Well, what am I good at? And when I found knitting, that’s when I realized that I found my niche. And from that very first time that I picked up those needles, it’s just something that I knew I was meant to do.”
Historically, knitting has been a male-dominated craft.
Sailors would knit their own sweaters. In World War One, the injured repaired uniforms. Even knights would knit their own chain mail. And the man known as “The Gladiator” relieves stress by knitting.
“It takes me to a place that makes me forget about everything. I go into a zone. And nothing has ever done that to me in my life before,” said Boria. “I’m creating something; I’m making something at the same time. So it’s kind of like I’m so focused on making sure that I’m executing whatever it is that I’m doing, and it just drifts me off. And you know, I love that it does that for me.
“It kills the time, so it makes my ride go even faster,” he added. “You know, next thing I know, I’m home and I’m getting ready to get off the train.”
Since his social media fame, Brooklyn Boy Knits has turned this into a full-time commitment. He knits up to 30 pieces a month and delivers his art to the world.
Overmyer: “This is where you come to get your materials. When you look at some of these colors, do you think of what you can do with it?”
Boria: “Absolutely. So like you know, you have different types of yarn. I mean you can see that there’s so many varieties of color here, and they’re constantly changing. So I’m always checking in and out. You know, I go online and I’ll see what’s going on there, and then I’m like, ‘I got to take a trip down to the store.’ And it’s all about feeling the yarn. I’ve been to places in Europe where you’re not allowed to touch the yarn. But here, we come and we touch and that’s how you know you’re going to get what you want.”
Overmyer: “This is an art that is built on tradition. There are only two different types of stitches, right?”
Boria: “Yeah, knit and pearl. But there’s techniques involved also that you have to learn. And you know, sometimes you’ll get stuck and your neighbor sitting next to you at a knitting booth can tell you, ‘Oh, I know how to do that, let me show you.’”
No longer the domain of grannies, knitting now has an edgy side.
“This is called Implexa. I basically used recycled T-shirts, leather, suede,” Boria said. “I never look at it as work. I look at it as my art, and it is art. You know, at the end of the day, it’s fiber art.”
Proving that art has no gender.
“My message more than anything and what I want people to understand is that you have a passion, you have a love for something that’s not considered normal, you go for it,” said Bario.  “Take that plunge and just do it, because the world can only benefit from that.”

Source:  newyork.cbslocal.com

Boys knitting? An unlikely yarn

Even the cool boys are queueing up to take up the latest trend at school – knitting 

 

Boys are taking up their knitting needles at Dog Kennel primary school, south London. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

Leaning back into the beanbag, dreadlocks swept away from his face, Remar Fulton is deep in concentration. The 11-year-old is knitting what looks like a scarf in black, green and yellow stripes. "The colours of Jamaica, my family's country," he says.
Remar is one of 20 members of the knitting club at Dog Kennel Hill primary school in Peckham, south London. As knitting fever has swept through the school, there are now almost 100 pupils on the waiting list – just under a quarter of the pupil population – and around half are boys from year 2 to year 6.

Young pupils like Remar and his classmates don't fit with the conventional image of knitters. Even in its recent renaissance among crafty twentysomethings, knitting is still considered feminine – a tradition passed down through generations of women. But boys across the country are now taking up their needles.

Boys now make up around 50% of primary pupils involved in Craft Club, the campaign run by the Craft Council and UK Handknitting Association, which supports schools to run knitting clubs led by community volunteers. Since it was set up in April last year, there are now over 350 groups around the UK, mainly in primary schools, and many more knitting groups run independently by teachers.

Stephanie Laing, trainee teacher at Dog Kennel Hill primary, can't quite believe how popular her knitting club has become among the boys. A knitting enthusiast herself, Laing set up the lunchtime club three years ago and the first four members were year 6 boys. "I was surprised by the ones who signed up – not only the boys, but it was the cool kids," she says. "I thought they weren't going to last, but it has become the cool thing to do."
Laing was a learning mentor when she started the club, working one-on-one with pupils who had emotional or behavioural problems. "I wanted them to be able to advance their skills, but it was also a way of opening up what I did for the whole school," she says. "For them, coming into a quiet room with bean bags and sometimes music playing: it's quite comforting and non-threatening."

Boys in the knitting circle agree that the club is one of the few relaxing parts of the school day. "It's peaceful, no shouting. It's different to other things in school," says 10-year-old Sam Otufale. "I usually play football – it's mad."
Another reason for the knitting club's popularity is the end-results. At today's lunchtime session, there is no sign of tea cosies or cardigans. Instead, boys proudly show off their wrist-bands, phone-holders and fingerless gloves.

The UK-wide Craft Club is keen to capitalise on this opportunity to introduce boys as well as girls to knitting, not just as a pastime, but as a technical skill that helps cognitive development.
Incorporating knitting into school life and throughout the curriculum has also been a successful way of getting boys involved. As well as teaching knitting within art, Kathryn Hitchings, classroom teacher at Bucklesham primary in Ipswich, used knitting to teach pupils about the second world war "make do and mend" campaign. This year she launched a sponsored knit, encouraging pupils to unleash their competitive streak. One boy managed to knit 75 metres in one day and pupils also took part in yarn bombing, covering a tree with their knitted garments.

The teachers involved in knitting groups have also noticed that the craft appeals to children who don't normally achieve in other areas, or who tend to misbehave. This is because there is an immediate and visible reward directly linked to the effort put in, says Katy Bevan, the Craft Council's participation and learning manager. "If you have a difficult child who's constantly misbehaving and being told off, suddenly they have knitted half a scarf and are given heaps of praise," she says.

As the boys at Dog Kennel Hill primary finish up before the bell rings, they are evidently proud of their knitting skills. They revel in advising their classmates and show off what they have made. But for one year 6 pupil, the appeal of knitting is more personal. "If you're angry, it calms you down," he says.

Source: The Guardian