Flowx

WindFire Designs

Flowx with Tim Elverston on a hill in Normandy France

Living in the wind

flowx kites fly on a ridge over Normandy, France with Ruth Whiting and Tim Elverston

These moments form images that blur the barriers between our dreams and our knowledge. Ideas are tested, and materials are understood through touch. Memories define skills that rise into systems. Our visions are driven by sensations and desires. This work captures moments of passion — artifacts of listening, playing, and thinking in the wind.

Flowx

Fluid, subtle, silent, organic, Flowx are not only beautiful, they are also one of our most robust and versatile kite designs. Ordered or scattered, nearly instant arrangements are made possible with sophisticated mechanics which run deep into the design and system that is Flowx.

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Red stack of 6 Flowx and a FlowxL in Cervia Italia photo and kite design by Tim Elverston

Quietly social

Flowx kites in Normandy France with Tim Elverston and Ruth Whiting

Adaptation

Flowx are porous, hand-dyed silk. The frame is thin carbon fiber. They fly with minimal pull, and they have the ability to soak up turbulent wind with their porous sail.

Minimum effort, maximum result.

Flowx is a system designed to deploy very quickly in large numbers, and to be self-maintaining even with only one or two people watching over them.

41 Flowx flying over Venice Lido - silk kites designed by Tim Elverston
Girl running through a group of Flowx

The silent flow of silk

Silence in motion. Even as the incredibly high-frequency wave propagates through the tail, the beautiful flow between every silk fiber allows large social groups of Flowx to fly in near total silence.

Hands and edges

Our process requires us to go over the same lines, again and again. Often, we have traveled the lines from sketches to templates to finished kite as many as 16 times before we are finished and ready to fly.

Tim Elverston sewing silk
Ruth Whiting building Flowx kites on a work table at windfire designs

As silk flows in the wind, so it does on a table. Building precise shapes from such dynamic cloth requires technology which blends the mechanical with the organic.

On left, Ruth checks the silk edges of our green series Flowx under one of our lamps.

 

Silk, set free in the wind, moves like no other material on earth. The nuanced motion shows turbulence overlaid on a regular wave in fine detail.

3 Flowx in Hawaii flying in slow motion

Sky Compositions

Creating images in the sky.

Ruth Whiting in the desert with a triangle installation of Flowx Kites designed by WindFire Designs

Flowx are designed to build shapes and patterns in the sky. These can come from ideas, dreams, tests, architecture, or simply because they seem correct at the time.

The Flowx system is built around fittings and technology that make them ready for almost any arrangement, and like many sky-borne species, they are more powerful and comfortable in large groups.

Flowx on Snake Hill near Daylesford Australia

Magic Line

Flowx use the wind as their final structural element.

The launch mechanism of a Flowx kite by windfire designs animated

In the sequence above, a single Flowx unfolds. The pressure of the wind slides a line and a fitting to open the frame from flat, to X, and into flight.

A mechanically advantaged component of the bridle is responsible for this transformation. The Magic Line allows each Flowx to take flight in just a few seconds.

Green silk flowx kites at Pyramid Lake Nevada - photo by tim elverston
 

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