Masakazu Yurt KATO

Hello! my name is Masakazu KATO but Please call me Yurt. Yurt is nomadian shelter in the steppes of Central Asia. I redesign it for the very warm and humid Japanese climate.

about me

working as industrial engineer in automobile industry.

but I have the background about Agriculture and folklore.

So The main theme of my researches are biochemistry of ‘natto’ and traditional methods of asian Nomad.

My recent work

tea room in Yurt(japanesse style Yurt)

Universal chess

board game “tataraba and forest

bamboo bra

Natto fabrication

My dream

In the near futureI hope to manage Mobile fab lab in japan.

lab name is fab lab river side.

On japanese traditional custom, all river side are common lands.

In there Everyone were allowed to do every business.

Today in japan fab lab stand only near big cities.

I hope to take minimum equipments for digital fabrication throughout countryside by the car.

So I hope to contribute to diffusion of digital fabrication to kits in countryside ,

with with the cooperation of several fab labs near cities.

Final project

From FAb LAb HAMAMATSU in JAPAN

Sketch of my final project

I would like to make Circular Loom for weaving Nanduti. Ñandutí is a traditional Paraguayan embroidered lace, like fabrics woven on the threads which go to and fro across the circular. therefore it could make using circular loom. the existing a circular loom is like fig. 1. I would like to add three functions to it.

1. Circular Heddles

Typical looms have more than two heddles to make the shed. the shed is the temporary separation between upper and lower warp yarns through which the wefts is woven. The shed is created to make it easy to interlace the weft into the warp and thus create woven fabric. I would like to make circular heddles for circular loom.

2. Transferring structures to Umbrella

When the weaving finish, cloths need to strath and dry . I thought of a idea that cloths are transfer to Umbrella, by forking its bones. Japanese Umbrellas have more bones than another contories.

3. pattern indicator lights

weaving cloth is too big to become more difficult to weave delicate patterns. I thought that circular image transform to rectangular pattern. LED light indicate weaving pattern for each layer.