Vernel Verzo- MA Interiors
HABI — Weaving Craftsmanship, Culture and the New Meaning of Luxury
HABI is a Southeast Asian fashion and craftsmanship centre that explores how spatial design can reconnect luxury with craftsmanship, cultural heritage and the human process of making.
Situated within the adaptively reused Circle Square Car Park in Manchester, the project brings together Manchester’s historic relationship with textiles and the rich craft traditions of Southeast Asia. Rather than viewing luxury through exclusivity and consumption, HABI reframes it through time, skill, material knowledge and human labour.
The spatial journey moves through heritage, making, fashion and performance. Visitors encounter Manchester’s textile history alongside Southeast Asian material and craft traditions before progressing into interactive workshops where processes such as weaving, natural dyeing, embroidery and garment construction become visible and participatory. These experiences lead into contemporary fashion retail and a transformable runway and event space.
Weaving became both a method of research and a spatial language throughout the project. Its principles of layering, intersection, transparency and connection inform the architecture, circulation and material approach.
Through adaptive reuse and the celebration of making, HABI proposes a different understanding of contemporary luxury: one rooted not simply in the finished object, but in the people, knowledge, materials and processes behind it.
