Eisenhower Memorial, Digital Tapestries

SCI_Arc Visual Studies / Spring 15'

Instructor : Elena Manferdini

This project explored the invention and fabrication of a geometrically mutating, digital tapestry in order to gain an understanding of how such a system can create architectural interiority. We developed an integrated digital process, using Processing to script a design based on images and applying these robotically to textiles at full scale.

Using image processing, I first created a palette of colors and patterns derived from a chosen image. While maintaining the vertical orientation of the color columns, color is systematically mixed at the edges of each column, creating visual continuity as the eye moves horizontally across the image. Finally, I printed the pattern onto a canvas, simulating a digitally manipulated woven tapestry.

Script Image Processing

Print on Canvas and Presentation

Eisenhower Memorial

The second part of the project considered digital tapestries at the urban scale. The brief was to create a version of the competition won by Gehry Partners for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC. Producing such a large scale tapestry in an urban space requires both technical knowledge about the material as well as an architectural understanding of the effects of the scale and density of the graphic pattern on the space enclosed and on the surrounding area. The image used for this purpose was a picture of a natural landscape, processed using the previously developed scripts and strategies to create patterns and colors derived from the image. Multiple layers were overlaid on top of each other to create depth in the patterns of the tapestry, leaving some areas more transparent to allow the eye to travel through to the building facade, which faces Eisenhower park.

Canvas Final Presentation