Architecture of Tailoring is an ongoing interdisciplinary art practice by Jo Baker Waters that merges weaving, bespoke tailoring, textile construction, film, and installation art. The project explores how cloth, yarn, and pattern construction can move beyond the body to become spatial, sculptural, and architectural environments.

Rooted in Savile Row tailoring and hand weaving traditions, the practice investigates structure, labour, material memory, and the anatomy of making through suspended textiles, exposed construction processes, woven surfaces, drafting systems, and deconstructed garments.

Textile techniques such as warp tension, pattern cutting, hand stitching, and weaving are translated into immersive installations that hover between garment, landscape, architectural ruin, and ceremonial space. The work reveals the hidden construction systems behind cloth and challenges distinctions between craft, fashion, sculpture, and contemporary art.

Through wool, natural fibres, and slow hand processes, Architecture of Tailoring also reflects on sustainability, longevity, repair, and the value of embodied human skill within an increasingly digital and automated world.

The title reflects how the principles of bespoke tailoring are translated into architectural space. Rather than creating garments to be worn, the project expands the language of tailoring into large-scale woven installations and spatial environments.

Through weaving, British wool and architectural space, the work explores structure, material memory and the traces left by makers. Pattern, deconstruction, tension and cloth become architectural elements that invite visitors to move through, experience and reflect upon.

Architecture of Tailoring is both an exhibition project and an evolving artistic practice that brings together textile heritage, contemporary installation and public engagement.

Through weaving, tailoring, suspended fibre systems and immersive installation, the practice investigates how textile materials can act as vessels for time, memory and transformation. These themes are explored through construction and unraveling, spatial tension, material atmosphere and the visibility of making.

The installations exist between the suit, landscape and architecture. Layered wool structures and suspended yarn fields evoke architectural remnants and psychologically charged environments that oscillate between precision and ruin.

Drawing on the visual language of bespoke tailoring, film noir, abstraction and architectural space, the work explores structure and instability. Through density, suspension and fragmentation, fibre is approached as a painterly medium that becomes both surface and monumental space.

Ceremonial intensity emerges through scale, accumulation and rhythm, allowing the work to move between softness and severity, comfort and unease. The work invites audiences to experience textile not simply as cloth, but as architecture, atmosphere and embodied memory.

Key themes include:

• Material memory and embodied knowledge

• Textile architecture and spatial construction

• Abstraction and material atmosphere

• Precision and spontaneity

• Landscape and environmental systems

• Material intelligence and the visibility of making

• Construction, deconstruction and transformation

• Presence, absence and psychological space

• Ritual, vulnerability and ceremonial intensity

Weaving and tailoring are connected through a shared language of structure, tension, construction, and form. In the practice, tailoring is approached as a form of architecture built around the body, while weaving becomes a method of drawing, constructing, and suspending space through yarn and fibre.

Pattern cutting, drafting lines, woven grids, seams, warp tension, and hand construction are translated into large-scale textile installations that move between garment, sculpture, and spatial environment. The work explores how cloth can shift from functional object into architectural form, revealing the hidden processes of making through deconstruction, suspended threads, exposed construction lines, and handwoven surfaces.

Both disciplines rely on precision, rhythm, labour, and material intelligence, allowing the practice to position textile construction as both sculptural and architectural.

The work primarily uses wool, natural fibres, woven textiles, yarn, tailoring canvas, and reclaimed textile materials. Installations may also incorporate hand weaving, suspended fibre systems, sound, moving image, and architectural structures developed through bespoke tailoring and textile construction processes.

Wool is central to the practice for its structural, tactile, and spatial qualities. As a renewable natural fibre connected to land, agriculture, and textile history, wool carries cultural memory through texture, density, warmth, and durability.

The work often incorporates wool sourced through local farms and textile partners, foregrounding relationships between fibre origin, hand process, and contemporary spatial installation. The use of natural fibres reflects an interest in material longevity, biodegradability, and alternatives to synthetic textile production.

Wool is approached not only as a textile material, but as a sculptural and architectural medium capable of forming immersive environments through suspension, accumulation, and woven structure.

The installations frequently incorporates surplus materials, offcuts, and reworked textile elements into new woven studies and spatial constructions.

The practice also advocates for the preservation and visibility of specialist craft knowledge within contemporary culture, foregrounding embodied hand skill, material understanding, and processes of making within an increasingly digital and automated world.

Yes. Hand weaving forms a central part of the practice. Many works are constructed through hand-operated weaving processes that allow for direct engagement with tension, rhythm, texture, and structural variation within the cloth.

The work often incorporates visible warp and weft systems, loose yarns, unfinished edges, and exposed construction processes, allowing the viewer to experience weaving not only as a finished textile surface, but as an active spatial and sculptural process.

The installations approach textile construction as a form of architecture. Weaving, tailoring, and pattern cutting are used to build spatial environments through line, tension, structure, and suspended material systems.

Cloth is treated not simply as surface or decoration, but as a structural and spatial medium capable of shaping movement, atmosphere, scale, and bodily experience. Drafting lines, woven grids, suspended threads, and deconstructed garment forms often function like architectural drawings translated into physical space.

Landscape and environmental systems influence the work through material sourcing, colour, erosion, texture, and spatial atmosphere. Suspended yarn fields, layered wool structures, and woven surfaces often evoke geological formations, shifting terrain, weather systems, and architectural remnants suspended between landscape and architecture.

By working with natural fibres sourced through local farms and textile networks, the practice reflects on relationships between material origin, land, labour, and the environmental histories embedded within cloth and fibre production.

The installations frequently transform woven structure into immersive spatial environments that move between textile, landscape, architecture, and ceremonial space, allowing the viewer to physically navigate systems of tension, accumulation, fragmentation, and repair.

Many of the installations are developed in response to the architecture, scale, and atmosphere of a specific site. Spatial conditions such as ceiling height, circulation, light, structural tension points, and viewer movement influence how textile elements are suspended, constructed, and experienced.

The work adapts to each environment while maintaining a dialogue between textile process, bodily scale, and architectural form.

Yes. Workshops, talks, demonstrations, and educational programming form an important part of the Architecture of Tailoring project. Public engagement activities often focus on weaving, tailoring, hand construction, material processes, and the transmission of specialist craft knowledge through embodied and hands-on learning experiences.

The practice works across educational institutions, exhibition environments, and interdisciplinary programmes, encouraging greater visibility and accessibility around textile construction, making processes, and contemporary craft practice within an increasingly digital culture.

For exhibition enquiries, collaborations, institutional partnerships, talks, educational programming, commissions, or press requests, please use the contact form on the Contact page or email directly through the studio contact provided.

The practice welcomes conversations with galleries, museums, curators, educational institutions, textile partners, and interdisciplinary collaborators interested in contemporary textile installation, craft, architecture, and material-led research.