Hooks and Loops – The Hyperstitch

By Gisela Baurmann

"Hooks and Loops – The Hyperstitch focuses on researching and implementing crochet as a design method beyond its traditional domestic context. As a craft that is recognized to support mental health, crochet fabrication simultaneously offers to collectively create sheltering and protective structures, as well as an intuitive approach to complex emergent formations in nature and mathematics.

In past research the computational analysis of crochet stitch construction was introduced. Crochet stitch construction and the craft’s topology were studied to enable radical material and dimensional shifts into a three-dimensional architectural scale, a structural output. The stitches allow for local specificity as well as feedback between local units and the global fabric, resulting in an 3-dimensional construct in an emergent process of form-making.

Human - Robot Collaboration

The current project builds on that research to bridge analogue and digital investigations of crochet, and explores to fabricate crocheted surfaces collaboratively with a robotic arm, allowing to build at engineering scale with industrial grade materials. The resulting light-weight supple structures are resilient and can provide protection in volatile environments, for example as avalanche barriers or sea walls.

Architectural Folly

In parallel, the project explores scaling up the crochet models through analogue fabrication, testing and prototyping large-scale fiber materials with adequate flexibility and structural strength to build a self-sustaining structure at the scale of a small pavilion.

The long-term goal is to employ robotics to manufacture large-scale crochet structures – demonstrating the architectural possibilities effected through the topological potentials of crochet-based construction."