Platform Two – RCA


* Free Powers

Author: Merel Karhof

wind knitting facotry logo

Cul-de-sac / dead end / no exit
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cul-de-sac

cul de sac

While I was trying to walk in a straight line from the Royal College of Art towards Kensington Olympia, I was confronted with lots of Cul de sacs. Interesting to me was the way the wind blows in and out these spaces, unlike in normal streets where the wind blows only in one direction.

Looking at this phenomenon, I set myself the brief to use this ‘free’ energy source and create a product with it.

 I created a mechanical wind powered knitting machine, which knits fast when there is a lot of wind and slow when there is not a lot of wind.

For my final show I present the machine as small wind knitting factory that illustrates a small production process from outside college, inside college. This visualizes directly what you can produce with the present amount of wind. The yarn will be knitted outside and enter the college trough the window as a long scarf. Inside there will be a small shop with me in it creating products with the harvested wool.

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Windmill Collection

windmill010 windmills

These are examples of a urban windmills, an urban windmill can catch the wind from each different direction, without having to move towards the wind.

windmills

windmill

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windmill

windmill

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first windmill tests

Making the wind visible with paper windmills

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windmills in south-kensington

close up wind mills

harvesting the small amounts of energy

small energy

harvesting the small amounts of energy

drawingmachine

windbrei maquette

wind phone charger

Wind creating a product

groen-achter groen-voor1

wind mill brooches

Making the energy you produce as a human, while you walk, visible with a windmill brooch

windmill performance

Performance South-Kensington, London.

wind knitting machine

Wind creating a product

knitted bracelet

the first products

maquette-wool-shop

college-machine

wind knitting factory on an empty facade in London

 

outside

This is a mockup from the machine like it will look. The mill functions as energy collector but at the same time it will be the signboard of my wind knitting shop.

 inside

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Since the wind knitting machine can not change yarn, I’m trying to design a yarn which has more colors on it, which will create a pattern on the scarf. 

wol ster