Pliable: 3 Bags

Pliable is a material based design seminar focused on the design of bags, using manual and machine techniques of sewing construction. Bags are interactive, soft containers that enable direct, isolated exploration of architectural issues: enclosure, organization, program, representation, site, and structure. The bags produced are models for architectural design speculation as well as immediate material objects that organize and communicate. Borrowing from manual and machine sewing—a tradition of fabrication outside of the architecture discipline—provides a pure understanding of design processes, concept through construction.

Sewing is a specific fabrication technique that offers connection, transition, structure, and ornament between and upon material surfaces. Stitches and seams have the capacity to both organize and express the relationship between material components.

3 design prompts: Shape, Graphic, Spatial

• The shape bag foregrounds the transformation of flat pliable surfaces into three-dimensional shapes. The bag exists in two states: a flat state and shape state.
  
• The graphic bag investigates the potentials of a "flat" graphic surface as an active and independent agent superimposed upon a three-dimensional form.
  
• The spatial bag looks at the design of fabric enclosures for a specific physical object. The single enclosure is then multiplied via repetition and seriality to explore new spatial and organizational possibilities for a bag in multiple.