A meandering path through the garden of the Capuchin monastery
SO–IL has created Common Thread for the garden of the former Capuchin monastery. Together with Dr Mariana Popescu (TU Delft) and Summum Engineering, the architects have developed a fabric that spans two neighbourhoods and creates a new urban connection.
Inspired by Bruges’ history as a centre for lacemaking, the US architecture firm uses weaving as a social, economic and formal binding agent.
Common Thread meanders like a curved line through the enclosed green space and accentuates new corners of the garden at every turn, slowly revealing the site to the public. The high-tech membrane consists of 3D printed elements, tubes and textile segments made from recycled PET bottles. The fabric skin, machine-woven at Delft University of Technology, plays with black-and-white plain weave patterns, creating a play of light and shadow, transparency and opacity, in the process.
Owned by the religious order of the Friars Minor Capuchin until 2020, the site is being opened to the public for the first time for this installation.
