Wool carding machine If you haven't already noticed, I am fascinated with the transformations that turn raw materials into architecture. I like to go back to the source of things- whether it's brick , plywood , or concrete . So I said yes straight away when the sales agent of Fiwo suggested I visit the factory to see how wool is turned into insulation batts. Fiwo is a Swiss not-for-profit company that was originally founded to re-insert people in social difficulty into the workforce. It also developed out of the realisation that wool is a waste product in Switzerland, and two-thirds of the wool production was being burned. The founder saw the opportunity to recover a valuable material that has many useful properties, as well as help out the sheep farmers by paying for a substance they would have had to pay to dispose of. The wool is first sorted by hand, to remove impurities and to sort by colour. Apparently, black wool fibres are coarser than white ones, which can be...