WOVEN FABRICATION
Blending Modern Design & Heritage Craft
Weaving is an ancient fabrication method that exemplifies the creation of complexity from simplicity. Due to its versatility and lack of barriers to entry, weaving has been developed and celebrated in almost every world culture. While more advanced manufacturing is widely-accessible today, weaving’s enduring advantage remains in sidestepping prohibitive manufacturing processes, enabling elegant and sophisticated designs with ease.
This artificial reef structure, designated a WREATH (woven-rebar electrolytically-accreted trophic hyperboloid) is woven by hand and requires no welding or specialized tools to create. The rebars strand are on uniform length, simplifying material preparation, and resulting in a implementation process significantly less costly and labor intensive when compared with other geo-engineering interventions.
The pictured jig holds the rebar strands in place until they can be woven into their final secure configuration. All construction elements, tools and materials were built from basic hardware pieces sourced locally on Koh Tao. An experience operator can produce a single woven tier using this tool in less than one hour.
