‘Wind Knitting Factory’ is a wind powered knitting machine that is attached to the facade of a building. The blades embrace more than a meter in diameter, and the wind cached by this mill drives the machine. Like this a long scarf gets knitted along the building downwards. When it is windy the machine knits fast and with less wind it knits slowly.
From the top of the façade the knitwear drops down along the front, until a window has been reached. Trough the window the knitwear gets continuously transported inside, where people can see it becoming longer and longer. Occasionally the knitwear gets ‘harvested’ and transformed into scarves. Every scarf gets a label that tells you the time and date on which the wind made the scarf.
Currently Merel works as well on upholstered furniture made with wind knitted fabric.
This mobile wind factory, which operates between the public and the private space, illustrates a production process and visualizes what you can produce with the present urban wind.
‘Wind Knitting Factory’ is part of the triptych ‘Energy Harvesters’ which are about the lost energy sources of a city.