LOOM Atelier is a spacial design studio based in Amsterdam, founded by Telma Caldas and Matthew Senkowycz. Hanging out with the duo always feels like playtime – a sandpit of philosophical exploration where there are no wrong answers. They make me curious about their curiosities, so I invited them to write this essay...
We’re just mending
In preparation for participation in any profession, an inherent practice is always idolised. An architect, whose voice is so profound that everything from door knob to structural weight distribution is within the scope of their specification.
But our time is different.
Our spaces often less.
The infrastructure of built environment ready…
...more than ready…
...it just doesn’t fit us.
We like stuff that’s too big.
We aren’t in it long enough to do too much.
Our budgets are budgeted.
But, we still need to feel at home in our spaces, maybe more than ever…
...or maybe we’re just getting old.
In the ‘60s, LeCorb wrote about “Tapisserie Muralnomad” (fig.1). The paper suggested that, with a social shift toward more temporary occupation, we would benefit from the ability to roll up our “home” and move it to the next place, like nomads, and woven tapestries provide a great solution, as they did for the nomadic tribes of times passed.
While not necessarily addressing the diversifying functional programme of a contemporary home, nor tailoring these functions to the ergonomic needs of our bodies, it did propose an aesthetic remedy for the longing of familiarity and a sense of home. It also resulted in the production of a great deal of breathtaking tapestries, which from time to time emerge in wondrous exhibitions, or, ironically grace the lobbies of fancy skyscrapers (fig.2)
(Editor note – I’m obviously obsessed with this idea now and contemplating how I can incorporate a smaller “grounding” element into my luggage when I’m travelling.)
As we document a home renovation in Amsterdam’s centre, our minds reflect on what Corb was hinting at, letting the walls rest and zooming in to examine more intimate aspects of space, specifically using textiles to mediate between the body and walls, mending the gap between self and space. The same principle is what made Annie and Josef Albers such a dynamic duo, her weavings instantly humanising architecture that could otherwise feel austere, even visually at a building’s façade. (fig.3) Spatial practice suddenly becomes more about mending than making, and that is marvellous!
We’re adjusting the seams a little so space grazes the body a bit more gracefully.
Some months ago, we were lucky enough to help imagine how to mend the ceiling plane of a Gyrotonics studio. Functionally the existing ceiling and lights worked well, but there was a disjuncture in their expression and the practice being illuminated below. We patched that by hand knitting a little over 2 kilometers of nylon tube yarn from Japan into wiggly 60 x 60 cm light diffusers (fig.4) softening an otherwise regularised spatial solution.
We were again struck by the profundity of textile interventions and their ability to mediate between body and “Architecture” last weekend as we meandering between Kimsooja’s bottari*(fig. 5) in the Oude Kerk. The recurrence of ideas of nomadism was present here too, each bottari filled with clothes donated by Amsterdammers. The church echoing whispers of those denied the opportunity for long term occupancy of spaces, on account of geo-political and socio-economic circumstances beyond their own control.
In response, we again begin to wonder how, as spatial practitioners, we can create with this in mind...
…space for more mending.
* we understand Bottari to be a Korean tradition in which items of a precious nature are bound in a cloth for safe keeping, or to be taken with during travel.
Fig.1 - Extract from Le Corbusier. “Tapisseries muralnomad.” Zodiac, no. 7 (1960): 57–63. Scan shared by Stedelijk Museum Library.
Fig.2 - Le Corbusier tapestry hanging in Australia Square, Sydney Australia (relocated after 2003)
Fig.3 - Annie Albers Drapery viewed through the façade of Rockefeller Guest House (1950)
Fig.4 - Hand knitted fluorescent tube diffuser by Loom Atelier, 60x60cm nylon tube yarn
Fig.5 - Kimsooja, To Breathe – Mokum. Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2025)
