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Shearing - Source: ONE News -
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New Zealand wool leaders are confident that convincing architects wool is the fibre of the future will create a trickle down effect.
Fourteen internationally-renowned architects from Europe, North America and Asia have flown in after accepting a challenge to design a concept hotel out of wool.
Project lead architect Heinz Richardson says there has been a huge transformation about wool and the possibilities are endless.
He says given the versatility of wool, he believes is one of the most sustainable products.
NZ Wool Council chairman Stephen Fookes says while it is an international project, it is a major and significant event for New Zealand to host and is the first major initiative to getting NZ wool back in the forefront.
"It's about a renaissance of wool which for the last 20 years has largely been forgotten about," says Fookes.
The mission to brainstorm a woolly hotel which would incorporate the fibre in every room aims to reinvent wool's image.
Dietmar Danner from AIT Architects says the industry is keenly aware of wool's past glory followed by its decades of decline. "I'm afraid they've done not enough for the material wool in architecture in the last 20 years," he says.
"If the architects decide let's use wool, then the chance that at the end of the day that wool is really in the project is very very high."
Gunther Beier, president of the International Wool Textile Organisation, says if the image of wool is not changed they will not we will not have achieved their goal.
He says they are doing something to create more demand for the product and when there's demand, it will pull the price up.
