The Weaving the Storm exhibition showcases first-year architecture students’ exploration of extreme weather systems through drawing and basket-weaving, translating atmospheric forces into spatial forms. In Spring 2024, these students studied specific storms—including tornados and blizzards—and captured their evolving energy through movement-based representations. The resulting woven structures reflect flexibility, transformation, and a new approach to architectural space shaped by natural forces.
An opening event will be held at the National Weather Center on Thursday, April 10, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (RSVP here), and the exhibition will be on view until April 28. The event is organized by Gibbs College of Architecture first-year architecture studio coordinator and faculty: Dr. Tamar Zinguer, Christopher Loofs, Shooka Motamedi, Hunter Read, and Ted Reeds.
The faculty team would like to recognize support from Gibbs College dean Hans E. Butzer and the late dean of the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences, Berrien Moore III, for making this event come to life. They would also like to thank Prof. Mark Shafer, as well as weavers/teachers Marcia Balleweg, Sue Fish, Mary Lee, Nancy Rimassa and Maggie Rimassa for their constant support. The exhibition is made possible with financial support from the Bruce Goff Chair of Creative Architecture.
Read on for more information on the exhibition. To view the event poster, designed by Sarah Scheerhorn, full size please click on the image below.
Weaving the Storm
Exhibition overview by Dr. Tamar Zinguer
Two elements – weather and weaving – come together in this first-year architectural design project to reflect on spatial principles in an ever-changing environment, demanding constant flexibility and adaptation to change.
Every winter extreme weather grips large parts of the North American continent. Temperatures plummet below freezing in various parts of the country, and blasts of wind whip snow, sleet, and ice. Atmospheric River, Pineapple Express, Bomb Cyclone and Bombogenesis are just few of the terms that have been coined to describe those destructive weather systems that have developed and continually disrupt lives. More and more extreme weather conditions prevail, and we adapt, for better or worse, shielding ourselves as much as possible, when warned by sophisticated systems that predict and track the different atmospheric patterns as they form.
When studying a site, an architect typically looks at the topography surrounding the building, the ground in which foundations are anchored, the slope of the terrain, the different views and access routes. Architects rarely take the time to study the formation of atmospheric systems, to represent them and the effect they have on us and on our building sites.
In this project, the students were asked to explore these important forces—extreme weather conditions and changing atmospheric states—that impact spaces and lives. However transient and shifting, the movement of air, wind, vapor, snow, and ice affects our behavior, our sight, our mood, our well-being, and our sense of safety. In extreme situations, the weather also threatens our lives.
First, each student chose an extreme weather condition—such as a blizzard, a hailstorm, hurricane, a tornado, a thunderstorm, lightning, Haboob (dust storm), or ice storm—and studied it, researching the evolution of forces, collisions, and pressures. Each student then represented, in two-dimensional form, different states of water and air, rain and wind, inventing ways to depict snow, hail, wind, and clouds. The drawings all included an aspect of movement, as the storms evolved and formed over time.
The second component of the project is weaving. For a full week, ninety first-year students learned basic basket-weaving techniques from experienced weavers, who joined the studio. The act of weaving—constructing a volume from planes that grow from the lines of the reeds over time—is then conceived as a drawing in space. The students grasped the entire storm system as it progressed in time and across the land, and drew it in space, three-dimensionally by weaving.
Storms are not finite objects, and weaving allows modeling the imprecise boundaries of these shifting atmospheric events. Through this project, the students learn important lessons about the conception of architectural space. Holding a malleable volume, forming it gradually over time affords an alternative beginning to the design of an architectural project. Weaving provides a way of handling, literally, a nascent spatial imagination.
The woven structures embody openness, flexibility, and porosity. They are malleable and supple and introduce the students to a new perspective on design, away from typical notions of firmness and rigidity that have guided the architectural profession for years, towards principles of openness, flexibility, change, and formation over time.