‘Wind Knitting Factory’ is a wind powered knitting machine that is attached to the facade of a building.
The blades embrace more than a meter in diameter, and the wind cached by this mill drives the machine. Using this machine a long scarf gets knitted along the building downwards. When it is windy the machine knits fast and with less wind it knits slowly.
From the top of the façade the knitwear drops down along the front, until a window has been reached. Through the window, the knitwear gets continuously transported inside. Occasionally the knitwear gets ‘harvested’ and transformed into scarves. Every scarf gets a label that tells you the time and date on which the wind machine made the scarf.
Currently Merel works as well on upholstered furniture made with wind knitted fabric.
This mobile wind factory, which operates between the public and the private space, illustrates a production process and visualizes what you can produce with the present urban wind.
‘Wind Knitting Factory’ is part of the ‘Energy Harvesters’ which are about the lost energy sources of a city.
'Biography'
Dutch native Merel Karhof (1978) currently works and lives in London. From a young age, Merel traveled through Europe and lived regularly for long periods in different European countries.
At the age of 18 Merel spent a year in Perugia (Italy), where she studied with an Italian fresco painter and made herself familiar with the Italian language.
On her return to the Netherlands she went to the Design Academy in Eindhoven, where she graduated at the Department of Man and Leisure led by Irene Fortuyn. Immediately after graduation, she was asked by Fortuyn to work in her studio. Meanwhile she also started her own Studio, Merel Karhof and she founded with formal Design Academy students, the Collective Circus Design.
In 2007 Merel received a bursary from the ‘Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds’, which enables her to follow a Master at the Royal College of Art in London. She studied at ‘Platform Two’ led by Jurgen Bey en Martino Gamper. After her studies, she was invited for residencies in Europe, amongst others for ‘Fondazione Claudio Buziol’ in Venice.
The work of Merel Karhof is a combination of art, science and craftsmanship. In her research based way of working she often develops her own tools and products which function as ‘three-dimensional sketchbooks’ which visualize her research.
