The Weaver and the Navvy. A Concrete / Textile Collaboration

This paper will chart a 10 year collaboration between a textile designer (Belford) and an architect (Morrow) that brings together concrete and textiles technologies and techniques, resulting in a range of unique tactile concrete surfaces, commercialized through Tactility Factory. The paper sits next to a sister paper which addresses in more detail the role of the textile designer, the textile components and their characteristics, including technical and design lineages.

This paper will set out the context of the collaboration: historically, culturally, regionally and with a brief critical reflection on the role of textiles within architecture. It will recall the conceptual beginnings of the collaboration and outline the challenges faced during the process of bringing our playful interactions to technical, patented and commercial resolution. The paper will also cover the concrete and fixing technologies and consider elements of scale in counterpoint to those addressed within its sister paper. As practicing researchers/ academics this paper will also map out some of the broader body of theoretical work that has evolved across the lifetime of this collaboration and how it has been informed and formed the ‘hand-work’. Finally the paper will conclude with a discussion of where the collaboration has brought us to and where the collaboration goes next. It will reflect both personally and strategically on what the architect has learned from the textile designer and how this might relate to future architectural practices.