Earthy textiles. Experiences from a joint teaching encounter between textile design and architecture

Paper in proceeding, 2017

This paper presents experiences from a two-day teaching workshop where first year students in architecture meet with first year students in textile design for an assignment on building structures with textile, soil and plants designing for indoor gardening with the aim of inspiring for more sustainable lifestyles. The background is a research project on textile architecture with the objective of exploring this new field and to establish a platform for long-term collaboration between the disciplines of architecture and textile design. The paper addresses pedagogical challenges in the meeting between first-years students of different disciplines and traditions, but also in the meeting between research and undergraduate teaching. The students produced creative results but had difficulties in exploring the full complexity of the task. An evaluative discussion is based on observations, photo documentation, notes during group discussions, follow-up questionnaires among the students and reflections among involved researchers.