The Nike Flyknit Collective held an opening reception on September 16th for architectural designer Jenny Sabin’s myThread Pavilion–an installation that combines the key tenets of Nike Flyknit technology with the activities and performances of participants from the Nike Flyknit Collective workshops held this past summer at Bowery Stadium.
Jenny Sabin is an innovator who works at the intersection of art, architecture, design and science. There are instant similarities in her approach to the work of Nike’s Innovation Kitchen, where disciplines from different fields are brought together with a view to re-thinking basic principles and approaches to design challenges.
Guests and past workshop participants came to view and interact with the knitted structure. Like Nike Flyknit, which uses simple threads to create a complex form-fitting structure on a performance-enchancing show, Sabin’s myThread Pavilion uses the flexibility and sensitivity of the human body as a biodynamic model for pioneering pavilion forms. The structure integrates data from the human body with lightweight, high performing, formfitting and sustainable materials. Guests who had attended the previous workshops were able to finally see how the data collected from their Nike Fuelbands during their challenge runs helped to form this installation and come a little closer to finding the answer to questions posed at the beginning of the summer: How do you knit and braid a building? How can sport influence construction and inspire the next generation of buildings? What if we could personalize and enhance architecture with bio-architecture and performance of our own bodies?
