“SweaterLodge” is an installation selected to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2006.
As a comment on our culture of mass consumption and our love of the great outdoors, the major element of the installation is a giant polar fleece sweater — 18 times human scale. Suspended indoors, an inhabited garment became a soft lodge. The polar fleece fabric was manufactured from recycled plastic beverage bottles. The installation had fun with the notion of recycling as an act of absolution in a film fantasy of a city overrun by plastic water bottles.
In the spring of 2011 the Museum of Vancouver remounted the installation with the “SweaterLodge Unlatched” exhibition. Visitors were invited to remove their shoes and sit under the canopy of the big sweater to “levitate”. Afterwards, they could take some fabric home and make something. By sending a photo to the MOV Flickr site the public creations became part of the exhibition.