CJ Walsh – Looking Outwards 11 – Women Practitioners

The person I have chosen to focus on this week is Jenny Sabin, an experimental architect with her own studio based in Ithaca, NY. While I found many of her projects to be super interesting, I wanted to focus on the myThread Pavilion, which was designed for Nike. I was drawn to this project by the video above, which goes into detail about the creative process and research conducted that lead to the final form. Through a series of creative workshops, her team wanted to make connections between physical activity and architecture. Using data from a workshop focused on exercise and movement, Sabin created personalized algorithms that translated the data into methods of weaving and creating pattern. These developed patterns and methods were then created at a large scale for the pavilion structure.

I think it is a really compelling project because of all the elements that went into creating it. It combines a mixture of branding, creative workshopping, computation, data physicalization and environments/architectural design. I am really inspired by both the creative process and the physical itself.

Link: http://www.jennysabin.com/mythread-pavilion

Jenny Sabin is considered to be at the forefront of innovation in architecture in the 21st century. Her practice often focuses on the intersection of architecture and science, pulling information from biology and mathematics to inform the structural possibilities of material. In addition to working at her firm, she is also a professor of architecture at Cornell.

Her education path is pretty interesting. She completed her undergrad at the University of Washington, getting degrees in ceramics and interdisciplinary visual art. She then went on to get her masters of architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. I think that its really interesting that she didnt begin studying architecture as an undergrad. She discovered this path after already starting a different one and has become very successful with a line of work she was really passionate about.

Overall, I find her practice and work to be super exciting and it is cool to see a blend of so many different mediums, styles and elements. Her work really reflects the pathways she has taken in order to create really amazing spaces.