All Things Urban

Don’t throw away your old garments, clothing or fabric! These clothes from the attic that date from another period in your life, the worn shirts your ex-lover left behind or just the silly purchases you made and which haven’t left the closet since: everything that creates a meaningful story, an interesting pattern or just a beautiful colour scheme will be the perfect starting material for this workshop. From the beginning of civilization, weaving has played a cultural and artistic role in societies worldwide. Also the economic and scientific influence of the design and technology of looms has been significant: more than two centuries ago, the first punch cards were used on looms, which can rightfully be seen as the prerunners of the computer and formed the basis for the industrial revolution. Weaving is far more than a hobby and it certainly isn’t dull or prissy. This course offers the participants an exploration into the multiple meanings of weaving on a traditional Finnish weaving loom. It is a communal journey for which the Independent School for the City has teamed up with visual artists Bart Gorter and Ernst van der Hoeven, to understand the principles of weaving and to discover it as a metaphor for urban planning, for architecture and storytelling, for the computer, for the landscape and many more things. The course will result in one large rug, collectively woven by the participants.

Open for all disciplines

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The Independent School for the City is a playground for all urban thinkers, do-ers and designers – based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It brings together critical and experimental ideas in the field of urban research, design, strategy and activism. Through a range of diverse activities, it offers a platform where urban professionals can meet to informally discuss the challenges facing the modern city. The school is an initiative of Crimson Historians and Urbanists and ZUS and is rooted in their practices of combining a critical and activist approach to the city with effecting real change through architectural and planning projects. The independent school for the City is founded on a strong belief in an incremental instead of a tabula rasa approach to city planning which blurs the lines between critique and practice on the one hand, and research and policy on the other.