This week we began to focus on details. Although my design is simple, there a quite a few important details that make up the intervention and need careful consideration. Some of the important detail aspects include the materiality of the curtain fabric, the movement an form of the curtains, the ergonomic aspects of the experience such as seating, and the mechanisms and structure that hold the curtains up. Luckily I have already started working out some details of the design last week in terms of fabric but this week I started looking into the arch ways.
I began by deciding to figure out where to place the cutout archways on my curtains so that they would service both states of the curtain, resting state and theater. I started by modelling the theater space to a rough scale with wire and cotton fabric and cutout the archways. I figured that working with the theater space would make more sense as this space was more structured and the placement and layout of the space and the archways was more deliberate.
After modelling this, I realised that it was going to be extremely difficult to place the archways exactly where I wanted them in both states of the curtain. I began brainstorming and came up with an idea that was inspired by some of my surface design explorations, ruching.
This design idea was inspired by both my own surface explorations as well as stage curtains. With constantly referring back to performance and theater, I was able to draw on this for inspiration and do some further research into stage curtains. With this design detail, the archways will be able to be placed freely along the curtain surface discreetly and can be lowered and lifted as desired. This will allow me to place archways in different areas according to the different spaces. This detail works by having two ropes imbedded into to the curtain fabric for each archway. The ropes can be lifted, lifting the bottom of the curtain upwards to a desired height, creating a ruched effect. What I also love about this detail change is the folding fluidity of fabric it creates, articulating again the performance of the curtains.
Spatial Design by Ciara 