At a vast exhibition like the Venice Architecture Biennale, visitors cross multiple thresholds, both literal and conceptual. They enter indeed national pavilions, each showcasing projects from specific countries, or explore spaces like the Arsenale and the Giardini Central Pavilion, where architects, teams, and studios from around the world present their work side by side, free from national boundaries.
One such project at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition (until 26th November 2023) in the Giardini Central Pavilion invites visitors to reconsider the meaning of thresholds, both physical and metaphysical, while highlighting the role of textiles in architecture.
"Textural Threshold Hair Salon: Dreadlock" by Felecia Davis integrates a physical threshold into the exhibition itself: a knitted isacord passage made of felted, dreadlocked material frames one of the doors connecting her exhibition space to the Pavilion bookshop. This threshold sets the stage for an exploration of materiality, identity, and digital boundaries.
Davis' work merges computational design and computational textiles, exploring the intersection of programmed materials and physical fibers. This shift from “hard” to “soft” architecture is central to her research and the installation merges traditional textile techniques with computational processes, using felting, locking, and sorting techniques to create a hybrid threshold. Unlike braiding or crocheting, which rely on precision, the dreadlocked and felted fabric structure is formed through a randomized computational process.
A wall displays images of various hair textures, while a salon chair invites visitors to twist, braid, or scan their hair to see if it matches any in the database. Machine learning, trained on a carefully designed global hair texture database, explores the digital dimension of thresholds.
Visitors can also reflect on the etymology of "dreadlock," a term with layered meanings: some trace "dread" back to the first encounters between African warriors and European colonizers, suggesting the warriors’ striking appearance, including their dreadlocks, instilled fear in the invaders. Yet dreadlocks are not just a hairstyle but a spiritual commitment, a link to African heritage, and a symbol of resistance against oppression and colonialism, so they also stand for awe and reverence. "Loc," of Germanic origin, is related to Old High German "loc" and Old Norse "lokkr," both meaning "lock of hair" or "curl." The word also refers to matted hair, tangled beyond untangling, knotted forever. Additionally, "loc" is connected to wool, specifically, the shortest and least expensive tufts from a sheep’s legs or belly, linking the concept back to textiles.
"The installation is about connecting the digital and physical thresholds," Davis states. "When we think of a threshold, we often picture two walls framing a passage between spaces. The same happens digitally. For example, when I arrived at Marco Polo Airport, my face was scanned and cross-checked with a database before the gates opened. These digital thresholds are reshaping architecture, and architects need to start considering them."
Davis emphasizes that architecture is increasingly shaped by databases, which can present challenges. "Databases aren’t always inclusive," she notes. For example, the Figaro 1K database, one of the few datasets that includes African hair typologies, is used by the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. for health and wellness research. "Hair tells a story – your age, where you've been, how healthy you are. But databases have limitations," Davis highlights. "If a machine is trained to recognize hair, what happens when someone wears a hat? Or when a person undergoing chemotherapy has no hair? These gaps are significant for designers. We can’t ignore them. And this aspect is also addressed in the installation."
Davis' work ultimately highlights a profound idea: thresholds are not just doors or passageways, they are dynamic spaces, both physical and digital, that shape how we experience and interact with the world.
“There are many other stories in the United States, particularly regarding legal changes," she says. "For example, the federal government is revising its policies in the Army, Navy, and possibly the Marines to allow women to wear short dreadlocks. The way you wear your hair impacts your identity and access, what spaces you can enter, what job you can hold. It’s all interconnected with broader societal shifts."
In addition to being the principal of FELECIADAVISTUDIO, Davis serves as an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University and is the director of SOFTLAB@PSU, the Computational Textiles Lab at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing.
SOFTLAB investigates how soft computational materials and textiles can be applied in architecture, furnishings, and clothing. Davis’ personal journey into textiles began in childhood, observing her mother and aunts working with fabric. Later, at M.I.T., where she earned her Ph.D. in Design and Computation, she developed computational textiles, that is fabrics that respond to commands through programming, electronics, and sensors.
At the back of the installation, a selection of test samples and computational textiles – designed as both analog and resistive sensors – explores new architectural possibilities. While her Black Flower Antenna, a knitted receiving antenna integrating computational technology, was too large to be exhibited here, the compact display features the Pop-up Rose Building Column Structure, part of the Dreadlock Series, made of knitted wool. This structure, which bridges traditional African hairstyles and architectural materials, investigates how textiles behave under tension and compression.
The project’s connection to Black hair culture draws inspiration from Ron Eglash, who investigates fractals in African architecture but also textiles and traditional hairstyling, linking African hairstyles to mathematical principles. Using knitting machines, Davis and her team created cords, felted them, and developed net-like fabrics, examining how architectural structures might emerge from the geometry of hairstyles.
"We realized these fibers behave like cable nets," Davis explains. "Fibers are also inherently connected to hair, if taken from an animal, they become wool, whether from a goat or a sheep. Today, we even have resistive yarns, which introduce new possibilities. In this case, we're creating a wool-based dreadlock structure that enhances material strength. By adding resin, we can manipulate the material’s thickness, channeling forces efficiently through the structure."
Among the other samples is a piece from Davis' FELT project, which explores responsive and conductive textiles. Developed from a study on how textures convey emotions through vision and touch, FELT features textiles that shift states – flattening or raising, for example – mimicking animal responses to stimuli like anger or fear. The speed of these transformations mirrors the reactions of the animals they are modeled after.
One sample on display is made from fine white wool blended with stainless steel and copper-coated polyester yarn. Felted for density and stiffness, this conductive textile functions as a capacitive sensor, hinting at future applications in responsive environments, such as lightweight shelters that redefine how we communicate and use space.
"The space feels like a laboratory where we can experiment," Davis says, explaining the research behind her pieces. "Lesley Lokko made this possible – at this Biennale she gave us the opportunity to create a place for testing and exploration."
