Opening Building with Textiles

We look back to a very inspiring opening of the exhibition Building with Textiles.

Chris van Duijn, architect and partner of OMA talked about the ‘soft aspect’ in the architectural practice of OMA and the value and challenge of short time projects compared to long term building projects. An example of a short term project is Prada Transformer, a temporary pavilion with a quite fancy possibility to turn around - presented in the exhibition. On Archdaily you can read the extensive article 5 Years Later, A Look Back on OMA’s Prada Transformer.

Specially for the opening artist Rob Sweere installed his archi-sculpture Vortex contemplatorium, a impressive huge tent filling the whole space adjacent to the chimney in front of the TextielMuseum. It was very special to experience the space inside the tent.

During the opening but also the two weeks after it we welcomed national and international guest, designers whom participated like Rita Parniczky (see also her blog), architects, professionals.

Yesterday a group of international researchers on smart textiles visited the exhibition in the context of the ArcInTex congress (TUE Eindhoven, the Netherlands. October 13 - 17, 2014) and they found it difficult to leave the TextielLab as well as the exhibition because they were thrilled about the possibilities of architecture and the integration of light in textiles.

However, also young public is attracted: 10 year old Ilan, the son of our librarian, had a short glimpse of the exhibibion on the day of the opening and came back the next day to have a serious look and to build his own textile building in the workshop which is part of the exhibition. His choice of profession he already made some time ago, however Building with Textiles made him even more keen: to be an architect.

Suzan Rüsseler