Excerpt: Cashmere pavilion by Atelier Meadow is a project that aims to recreate the subtle beauty hidden inside of the poetry of textile production. The pavilion is composed of a modular system that embraces the entire space defining the different areas. At the same time, the boundary between the outside and the inside is blurred by 100,000 meters of steel wire that allows visitor’s sight to penetrate the pavilion.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] For the Autumn Edition of 2023 of Intertexile Shanghai, the world-renowned textile fair, Atelier Meadow designed a pavilion for Chinese cashmere brand Xingwu and Yetian.
As the founder of Atelier Meadow, Edoardo Nieri recalls, this project is very important to him as a nostalgic connection to his hometown, Prato in Italy. A city well-known for its textile production. Furthermore, due to its sentimental value, it brought back many memories of his childhood characterized by the sounds of the machines and the scent of bolts of fabric that have been embodied into the design approach.
For Intertextile 2023, Atelier Meadow designed a pavilion that aims to recreate the subtle beauty hidden inside of the poetry of textile production. The pavilion is composed of a modular system that embraces the entire space defining the different areas. At the same time, the boundary between the outside and the inside is blurred by 100,000 meters of steel wire that allows visitor’s sight to penetrate the pavilion.
The use of steel wire plays an important role along the journey, as it represents the structural element that composes each fabric piece. The intriguing pattern created with steel wires, and inspired by the traditional textile looms, blurred the scenes inside as a sort of abstraction of the image that may be seen through the lines. Developed not as merely form or object, the perimetral wall meant to act as a functional machine, where the hanging racks for product display and the lighting system are embedded and merged together to become an entirety.
The interior space had been developed to continue the theme of delicacy that rules the entire design process, where the selection of materials aim to distinguish the two brand areas. For Xingwu, stone finish for the exterior and paint finish for the interior were applied for its conference rooms; while for Yetian, wooden finish was applied for both the exterior and the interior of its conference rooms, where the verticals outside was designed to reflect the subtle lightness of the steel wires, while the usage of metal mesh to partially shield the interior of each meeting room have been pursuit to provide privacy and to create a connection with the pattern of fabric weave.
Furniture is another important aspect of this project. Atelier Meadow developed furniture and lighting for the pavilion as an extension of the concept of textile loom. For Edoardo Nieri, the approach to design is never to divide or to distinguish the outside with the inside, he said, “I always think that people’s experience is the main purpose of the design process, all the aspects needs to be tied together in harmony in between their particles, in order to have an involvement that fulfill the existence”.
With this project, Atelier Meadow has been awarded as “China Young Architecture Firm 2023” by Archiposition, one of the most important research-based architectural and cultural institutions in China.
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