Herbal weavings at the school in Bunesti

workshop coordinators:

stardust architects*

Anca Cioarec, Brîndușa Tudor

within the Bunești School (authors Ana-Maria Goilav, Petre Guran)

ZĂRNEȘTI village, MĂLURENI commune, ARGEȘ county

Photo: Summer school participants

Illustration: Theodora Ștefan

For a week we weaved with the flowers from the Bunești school's meadow with the students. We improvised looms out of hazel nuts and twine, which we wove with chicory, volvulus, hyssop, pipirig or thyme. The result was ephemeral fabrics that can provide shade in front of windows, intimacy, diaphanously separating different spaces, a sense of well-being through their olfactory presence. But the essence of the workshop was not the resulting objects, but the free and therapeutic process through which we approached the place.

We felt we understood it better by interweaving it with the flowers in the meadow.

As we filled the courtyard of the circular house with plant curtains, Ana-Maria told us that the pear tree changes its plants from year to year, including inside the paved courtyard, and that there is this belief that sometimes the place starts to grow the plants that people need, that are good for them.

We would love to continue to weave with plants from other places, in fact the story of the loom and working together is a recurring theme in our practice, we dream of a collective carpet woven from a thousand hands as a symbol of the strength that the group actually has when it has a common purpose.