Full Property
IABA 2025 — International Antalya Architecture Biennial
Dimare’s fibre-art piece for IABA 2025 — the International Antalya Architecture Biennial, held under the theme “In-Between” — a hand-knotted teal rope net stretched in a steel frame, sagging under illuminated orbs above a walkable blue net floor.
Property
Bienal / Event
Delivered
2025
Location
Antalya, Türkiye
What the client needed.
A biennial is not a client brief. There is no hotel to fit, no palette to match and no function to serve — the piece has to hold its own in a hall full of other work, in front of an audience of architects rather than hotel guests. The 2025 edition of the International Antalya Architecture Biennial ran under the theme “In-Between”, which is where a knotted net belongs: it is neither wall nor ceiling, neither solid nor open. Two practical things had to be true at once. It had to be readable from across the hall, above the heads of a moving crowd, and it had to survive being touched — a public exhibition means children reach for whatever glows, so nothing could be fragile and nothing could be at a height where it could be pulled down.
How we designed it.
We used the knot as both the structure and the subject. A teal rope net is hand-knotted and stretched inside a steel frame, then loaded with illuminated orbs so the mesh visibly sags under them — the piece shows the material doing work rather than hiding it, and the sag is what makes a net read as fabric instead of as a grid. Below it, a lit blue net floor lets visitors stand and lie underneath, so the installation is experienced from inside; the orbs sit high enough to be reached toward but not reached. A second, smaller piece — a yellow rope cradle knotted inside its own frame — gives the close-range reading: at arm’s length you see the individual knot that the large piece is made of, hundreds of times over. Both were knotted by hand in our Antalya atelier and assembled on site.
What we delivered.
Fibre-art installation for an international architecture biennial — a hand-knotted rope net canopy on a steel frame with illuminated orbs, a walkable lit net floor, and a companion knotted rope cradle piece
Materials Used
Hand-knotted rope net canopy
Teal, steel frame, loaded with illuminated orbs
Illuminated net floor
Walkable, lit from beneath
Knotted rope cradle
Companion piece in its own frame
Installed & photographed.
A visitor encounters the illuminated net installation.
The overhead and floor layers seen together.
The net follows the rounded volumes of the lights.
Knot spacing and light at close range.
The complete installation within the exhibition hall.
A group photograph beside the exhibited work.
Yellow netting explores a suspended, curved form.
A view of the wider biennial exhibition.
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